Mirage Changes (Not Quite a Rework)

[(XBOX)Ampathetiic]

Mirage has a pretty good set of abilities in concept, but many of these abilities have issues that hold them back from being fully functional in-game.

Mirage's passive is good QoL, although the sliding duration bonus is pretty useless, the roll speed bonus feels good and lets roll be used as a short evasive/repositioning maneuver that doesn't take Mirage too long to perform. However, as a passive it's quite underwhelming, and could use a little extra effect to be a suitable passive ability.

Hall of Mirrors is probably Mirage's best ability, but only because of how it interacts with weapons that have AoE effects (including melee cleave), as it expands the width of those AoE effects by shooting extra projectiles (or performing extra melee attacks) to the side of Mirage's own. Unfortunately, weapons that are single target do not benefit nearly as much from this effect, because the clones have a tendency to not hit anything directly with their attacks. Additionally, the clones are given high threat level to give Mirage some extra survivability, but the projectiles fired at the clones can fly straight through, hitting Mirage as well.

Sleight of Hand is hands down Mirage's worst ability when not used with its augment. The booby traps have overall weak effects, and remove pickups from the map that Mirage hasn't picked up yet. The jewels created by Sleight of Hand are simply not worth using, since the type of jewel you get is dependent on the environmental lighting of where the jewel is placed, and the damage of the dark jewel is too negligible to risk accidentally casting.

Eclipse is a self buff with very high buff values, but the catch is that the buff type and buff value is dependent on environmental lighting, something that is impossible for the player to accurately determine. Because the dark buff that Eclipse provides is Mirage's only viable source of survivability, and isn't controllable, Mirage ends up being a very squishy frame. Eclipse also doesn't display the value of the buff the player is benefiting from, making it very difficult to decipher where the lighting is most optimal for light or dark.

Prism is a strong damaging ability, due to its very high damage ramp up with every enemy affected, but the ability is held back by its lengthy cast time that restricts Mirage's actions, which only feels reasonable when used with Natural Talent. Additionally, Prism's damage ramp up isn't mentioned anywhere in-game, meaning that many players are completely unaware that the ability has an extra very powerful damage multiplier, unless they check the wiki.

Below are the changes I would make throughout Mirage's kit. Not all of them are mandatory, but they are all designed to improve Mirage without changing how she is played in a negative way (meaning there are no playstyles being removed, only added).

 

Passive

• Along with her current passive, Mirage reloads 20% (rounded up to the nearest whole number) of the magazine (from reserves) for her equipped weapons when rolling. OR In addition to her current passive, Mirage gains increased parkour velocity.

Hall of Mirrors

• Enemy projectiles that directly hit Mirage's clones will be nullified, going through the clone and dealing no damage to Mirage.
• Clones will follow Mirage's reticle when she is aiming.

Sleight of Hand

• Tap/Hold to cast a light/dark jewel.
• Deployed jewels will generate a 5m aura (affected by range mods) of light or dark, depending on the jewel type.
  • This aura will count as fully light/dark for Mirage's abilities.
  • Jewel aura radius increased by 50% if Hall of Mirrors is active on cast.
  • Aura persists for the full duration of Sleight of Hand, regardless of the jewel being armed.
• The center jewel created by Mirage will rearm itself every 3 seconds, instead of expiring after the first detonation.
• Detonation radius scales with ability range.
• Jewel damage when cloaked in darkness increased from 200 blast damage to 500 blast damage.
• Booby trap improvements (see below).

Spoiler

• Control console explosions increased from 200 blast damage to 1,000 blast damage.
• Robotic units trigger booby trapped control consoles
• Laser barrier energy cap increased from 50 energy to 200 energy.
• Removed radial damage falloff on pickup explosions
• Pickups are no longer removed from the map for Mirage, but cannot be trapped more than once per pickup.

• Augment change: Auras generated by Sleight of Hand jewels will also convert pickups into explosive mines, while sending any loot within the aura to Mirage's inventory.

Eclipse

• UI buff values match the actual buff percentage being provided by Eclipse (rather than only displaying the maximum values).
  • If buff values are too precise to be displayed and constantly updated, divide buff values into tiers, and instead display those tiers.
• Eclipse's damage reduction applies to Toxin damage (For some reason it doesn't currently).
• Eclipse's visual effects can be reduced by reducing Effect Intensity in the options.

Prism

• Reduced cast time from ~2.2s to ~1.6s (Equal to Prism with Natural Talent).
• Add Prism's increased damage per enemy affected to the Warframe abilities screen (Either as part of the ability description or as a tip).

[LagartoPunkarra]

6 hours ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

Projectiles that directly hit Mirage's clones will be nullified, dealing no damage to Mirage.

And with that I have to say no, that would be a really horrible idea.

Remember when we had self-damage? More than half of the times that you blow yourself was because a player blocked the projectile in front of you.

Now remove the self-damage, add the staggering mechanic and making projectiles detonating when making contact with a clone and you get a severly gimped Mirage.

And if you mean that the projectile just "disappears out of thin air", then also no, Mirage is a DPS and that would reduce her DPS.

[(XBOX)Ampathetiic]

1 hour ago, ElecDeathblade said:

And with that I have to say no, that would be a really horrible idea.

Remember when we had self-damage? More than half of the times that you blow yourself was because a player blocked the projectile in front of you.

Now remove the self-damage, add the staggering mechanic and making projectiles detonating when making contact with a clone and you get a severly gimped Mirage.

And if you mean that the projectile just "disappears out of thin air", then also no, Mirage is a DPS and that would reduce her DPS.

I don't think you're understanding what the change is. I probably should have clarified that enemy projectiles were the ones being nullified, but I thought the "dealing no damage to Mirage" part implied that, along with the paragraph about Hall of Mirrors identifying that there was an issue with enemy projectiles, aimed at the clones, going through the clones and hitting Mirage.

I'll make that edit though to avoid further confusion.

[LagartoPunkarra]

9 hours ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

I don't think you're understanding what the change is. I probably should have clarified that enemy projectiles were the ones being nullified, but I thought the "dealing no damage to Mirage" part implied that, along with the paragraph about Hall of Mirrors identifying that there was an issue with enemy projectiles, aimed at the clones, going through the clones and hitting Mirage.

I'll make that edit though to avoid further confusion.

Okay, that makes much more sense, thank you. If enemy projectiles are the only one being blocked then that would buff clones to make Mirage stay alive a bit longer.

[RazerXPrime]

Only thing they need to do is give her an ability to control lighting. Replace her sleight of hand with something that does this on press or hold for different lighting so you can alter the buff while active. Prism needs to be replaced by something useful. 

[(XBOX)Ampathetiic]

16 minutes ago, RazerXPrime said:

Only thing they need to do is give her an ability to control lighting. Replace her sleight of hand with something that does this on press or hold for different lighting so you can alter the buff while active.

I completely agree, although I don't think Sleight of Hand NEEDS to be replaced to accomplish this, rather the light/dark zone can be added to the ability as a synergy effect with her other two abilities that benefit from it (which is exactly what I did, along with buffing SoH in general).

18 minutes ago, RazerXPrime said:

Prism needs to be replaced by something useful. 

What exactly are your issues with Prism? I know many players find the duration + energy drain over time to be annoying, but in my experience Mirage is quite energy efficient, due to HoM and Eclipse only costing 25 energy and having lengthy durations. Some people complain about the damage Prism deals, but I think that's mainly because the ability description doesn't mention it's most powerful mechanic, that being the damage multiplication per enemy affected.

[RazerXPrime]

17 minutes ago, (XBOX)Regxxh said:

I completely agree, although I don't think Sleight of Hand NEEDS to be replaced to accomplish this, rather the light/dark zone can be added to the ability as a synergy effect with her other two abilities that benefit from it (which is exactly what I did, along with buffing SoH in general).

What exactly are your issues with Prism? I know many players find the duration + energy drain over time to be annoying, but in my experience Mirage is quite energy efficient, due to HoM and Eclipse only costing 25 energy and having lengthy durations. Some people complain about the damage Prism deals, but I think that's mainly because the ability description doesn't mention it's most powerful mechanic, that being the damage multiplication per enemy affected.

The issue with Prism isn't that it's a bad ability. It's that Mirage doesn't need it.

If I had to mention a gripe with it, for me it's that it's unreliable due to the bouncing nature. It could get stuck somewhere and be comepletely pointless while draining energy. And yes the damage is ok vs low level, but high level enemies meh. It's just kind of there.

[(XBOX)Ampathetiic]

8 hours ago, RazerXPrime said:

The issue with Prism isn't that it's a bad ability. It's that Mirage doesn't need it.

I guess I can understand that, but I'd argue that Prism does a lot of good for her kit as a DPS frame. Besides, it's such an iconic ability to Mirage that DE would never consider replacing it.

8 hours ago, RazerXPrime said:

for me it's that it's unreliable due to the bouncing nature. It could get stuck somewhere and be comepletely pointless while draining energy.

The bouncing can definitely be annoying if you want to just throw Prism out there without aiming. I usually use Prism Guard, but when I can't fit that on my build Prism gets used less, because I don't feel like aiming it in a way that doesn't get it stuck. As for wasting energy, I think that's more of an issue with keeping an eye on Prism and making sure you toggle it off when it stops being useful. Prism isn't meant to be a set and forget ability (it'd be too powerful that way), so you have to watch it and detonate it when you're done, so you don't waste your energy.

 

9 hours ago, RazerXPrime said:

And yes the damage is ok vs low level, but high level enemies meh

I really don't understand this one. The damage on Prism to most enemies in the game is very high, even unmodded, provided that you have at least a few enemies within Prism's fairly large radius. I keep Mirage out of SP, due to how squishy she is, but even in that environment Prism does great damage, because there are a lot more enemies than in normal missions, which means even higher scaling. If you are trying to deal with a single beefy target, or a smaller cluster of tanky enemies, I find that using the blind of Prism sets up Hall of Mirrors to take advantage of melee stealth multipliers, which leads to very high single target damage.

[Azamagon]

Very nice suggestions!

Some thoughts:

Sleight of Hand

• Although you said that loot doesn't vanish for Mirage via SoH, I think it still could - but with a slight twist: Instead of affecting all orbs and ammo, make it ONLY affect ammo? The colours of the orbs kind of match the 4 damage elements too:
  • Pistol (Red) - Heat
  • Shotgun (Green) - Toxin
  • Rifle (Blue) - Cold
  • Sniper (Purple) - Electric
• That way, Affinity-, Energy- and Health orbs are simply untouched by the ability.
• I'd like to be able to refresh the duration on already affected loot, if they haven't triggered yet.
• The light-jewel could perhaps also knock down targets, so it has SOME scaling utility to it

Eclipse

• It would be nice to be able to "snapshot" and keep the current lighting's bonus for Eclipse by holdcasting the ability midduration (and be able to remove the snapshot value again by holdcasting once more - so you basicly holdcast to toggle between "snapshot current lighting" and "adapt to lighting constantly"). This gives even more value to your suggested tap/hold light/dark jewels - and even if this would be superuseful for Helminth-users too, it's still only 100% reliable for Mirage, due to those reliable dark/light SoH jewels.

Prism

• A big problem with Prism is that, while decently powerful damage on low/mid levels, it has basicly no "endgame" value outside of its ending blind effect. On top of that, it ONLY has a bonus in light (a damage bonus).
  • So; How about giving it a small status-chance of Impact and Radiation? At neutral lighting, they would have equal chance. In bright light, it would have a higher chance to proc Impact, but lower chance for Radiation - and in darkness it would be the opposite (low Impact chance, high Radiation chance).

[(XBOX)Ampathetiic]

9 minutes ago, Azamagon said:

A big problem with Prism is that, while decently powerful damage on low/mid levels, it has basicly no "endgame" value outside of its ending blind effect. On top of that, it ONLY has a bonus in light (a damage bonus).

Do you know about the scaling with each enemy hit? That one part of the ability allows Prism to perform quite well even in Steel Path.

from the wiki: Additionally, Prism gains +100% damage per enemy hit (affected by lighting).