Rant on Mirage's False Effectiveness

[Raspberry]

My Mirage Prime's poor performance in the Interception (Eximus) sortie today made a lot of things clear about her. This play on light vs. darkness on Mirage's stats is a real joke if you consider what Warframe as a game is: a parkour hack-'n-slash + shooter hybrid with almost magical abilities to aid in combat or even sometimes just directly dominate the enemy. And with nearly no control on the maps we play on, Mirage is only but full of hindrances to her potential. The buffs she gets are nowhere near reliable because of silly "brightness/darkness levels" on top of multiplier bugs, making her inferior to every competitor that plays a similar role:

• I literally need 205% ability strength for Eclipse's light effect to eke out a 1.5-2.5x multiplier, even though theoretically, she only needs 100% ability strength to accomplish it. And don't get me started on the same sort of broken ability strength scaling for Hall of Mirrors (and that ability doesn't even take on the map brightness levels).
  • Banshee can easily accomplish a 2x multiplier usable by all allies with only 40% ability strength (5x at 100% strength), and the weak spots even stack on each recast of Sonar.
  • Nova guarantees a 2x multiplier with Molecular Prime, also usable by all allies, and her ability strength instead manipulates enemy speed to great effect, either to increase rate of killing low levels or slowing down high levels to 25% speed.
  • Chroma can Vex himself to outrageously broken (bugged) multipliers because secondary elemental damage is multiplied twice (three times if secondary elemental damage is innate instead of just modded); 25x damage multiplier is actually a thing with Chroma, plus his armor can go upwards of 98% damage resist on health at the same time.
• Okay, so Mirage's DPS is broken and unreliable. What about her tanking, minus already losing to Chroma by a lot? No matter how much ability strength is on there, she'll never get anywhere close to 95% damage resist. In my Interception eximus sortie, she was still getting killed in one shot by Detrons and Lankas while being affected by Eclipse's night effect.
  • Gara laughs at incoming damage with her guaranteed 90% resist, and the casting process to instantly get it for 40-55 seconds (depending on mods) is zero effort.
  • Trinity can tank at up to 94.75% damage resist with a stacked Link + Blessing, and Blessing heals all allies instantly with a stackable 75% damage resist.
  • Oberon's armor buff with Hallowed Ground + Renewal is far less impressive, but the guaranteed healing over time, immunity from status effects, and radiation proc to make enemies mostly fight each other instead mitigates damage so much that it's functionally very competitive to 90% resist buffs.
  • Rhino and Nezha have buffered health, very straightforward tanking.
• Mirage can't attack well or defend herself well. But she can at least blind enemies, right? 50 base energy to spawn a jewel that MAYBE procs blind but could also proc blast AND eats up all the ammo and energy orbs that each become an explosive gimmick that does negligible damage. Or, you can spend 50 base energy PLUS 2 seconds of "please shoot me, I can't fight back" casting time PLUS a base 10 energy/sec drain to cast a Prism that must manually be detonated to cause a blind.
  • If I had to choose which of the two poisoned grails to drink from, I'd just pick Excalibur and use his quick and reliable Radial Blind. I don't care that Prism and Sleight of Hand do damage, they're very negligible at sortie levels regardless of ability strength.
  • Or, Oberon's Reckoning can just pick up and throw all enemies in a hard-CC ability that even heals allies with health orbs, makes survivors fight each other from the guaranteed radiation procs, and blind enemies that were barely outside the ability radius. Prism doesn't even remotely compete.

So, after all this, plus probably 2 more similar threads I made in the past (and 20+ more from others who also want Mirage to actually be good), I've just had it. Sorry for the rant, but Mirage really loses her usefulness above tier 5 PoE bounties. At sortie levels, DPS, tanking, buffing, and CC really have to be reliable, yet Mirage somehow fails at all of them (even needs an augment to be a team support asset instead of just her own thing). Oh, and about my Interception mission? We still won it because a Nekros with a memeing strike Atterax was out-DPS-ing me by a factor of 3. The only thing that made me not useless was my Akbolto Prime. That thing was a godsend, love that weapon.

Edited January 26, 2018 by Raspberri
forgot to add tag

[Biddion]

Nerf the Atterax!

[AperoBeltaTwo]

Are you seriously complaining that TWO of the most powerful weapon buffs in the game aren't powerful enough? I get when you say the light\dark thing is gimmicky and unreliable, but when you're seriously saying that's her damage buff is weaker than that of a chroma... are you even serious?

 Mirage has two completely useless abilities that need a rework. Mirage needs a tweak to the way her buff works mechanically - sure thing. But she's not weaker than other frames. No, seriously, she's one of the strongest frames in the game and her damage output is truely godly. And that's even without the melee weapons! 

Edited January 26, 2018 by AperoBeltaTwo

[NinjaZeku]

This reminds me of that topic where someone wanted Soma Prime buffed :D

Spoiler

 

[DeliciousDoob69]

I don't know about these 2 dudes who posted before me, but I somewhat agree with you. I'm been complaining about this since november when DE was messing with Mirage. I think her buffs are powerful whether or not I'm getting the actual damage and resistance listed (which from what I understand I'm not). I also do agree there are many more frames that out power her in terms of raw damage and do it much safer or more easily, which is sad because she's suppose to be a DPS frame. The think that irks me the most is having to rely on dark/light spots. In normal level this isn't to hard but still annoying, in PoE this is next to impossible. The PoE forces us to have one buff or the other for huge gaps of time with litle to no way to change those buffs. If they allowed her to switch between these buffs I believe she would become a much more usable frame. This is my rant on a similar subject 

 

[Raspberry]

2 hours ago, AperoBeltaTwo said:

Are you seriously complaining that TWO of the most powerful weapon buffs in the game aren't powerful enough? I get when you say the light\dark thing is gimmicky and unreliable, but when you're seriously saying that's her damage buff is weaker than that of a chroma... are you even serious?

 Mirage has two completely useless abilities that need a rework. Mirage needs a tweak to the way her buff works mechanically - sure thing. But she's not weaker than other frames. No, seriously, she's one of the strongest frames in the game and her damage output is truely godly. And that's even without the melee weapons! 

Yes, Mirage's damage buff is weaker than Chroma's. The numbers that the game tells you? They're a lie. Chroma's multiplies twice for secondary elements, so for example, a 400% damage multiplier on a radiation Lanka is actually 1600%. Mirage on the other hand says it's a base 200% multiplier, but it's actually lower, and none of us can figure it out. Many have tried, and the math never made sense, but what was always consistent was that it was lesser. Same with damage resist. At this point, it's likely a mixture of "not standing in the brightest/darkest spot" of a tileset, along with the damage multiplier not being applied to some damage-increasing weapon mods. Octavia's 4 ability (Amp) also suffers this exact same issue, except that at least that ability doesn't rely on something as stupid as map lighting.

[Raspberry]

2 hours ago, NinjaZeku said:

This reminds me of that topic where someone wanted Soma Prime buffed :D

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Actually, Soma Prime is starting to fall behind due to power creep (mostly by shotguns, although Hunter Munitions will keep it in relevance for another while). That aside, Mirage is far from strong, and I have given many examples where she is just utterly inferior. If the weapon damage multiplier were accurate, I would say that Mirage is good through lvl 150 enemies for a pure DPS build, but extensive testing has shown that her weapon damage multiplier is NOWHERE near what it shows, ever. Same goes for the damage resist, never even went remotely close to a 95% damage resist, not even in the darkest parts of any map.

Now back to your Soma Prime comment, if say the weapon through extensive testing was discovered to have only a 1.3x crit damage multiplier in Simulacrum despite the labeled 3.0x in Arsenal, then yes, I would want it "buffed" (more like fixed). But since Soma Prime doesn't have mathematical accuracy problems as far as I know, it's a completely irrelevant topic.

[Raspberry]

2 hours ago, deliciousdoobmaster69 said:

I don't know about these 2 dudes who posted before me, but I somewhat agree with you. I'm been complaining about this since november when DE was messing with Mirage. I think her buffs are powerful whether or not I'm getting the actual damage and resistance listed (which from what I understand I'm not). I also do agree there are many more frames that out power her in terms of raw damage and do it much safer or more easily, which is sad because she's suppose to be a DPS frame. The think that irks me the most is having to rely on dark/light spots. In normal level this isn't to hard but still annoying, in PoE this is next to impossible. The PoE forces us to have one buff or the other for huge gaps of time with litle to no way to change those buffs. If they allowed her to switch between these buffs I believe she would become a much more usable frame. This is my rant on a similar subject 

 

Yes, I've seen and even been on that thread. Right now, I'm just trying to keep Mirage's problems in relevance. I really want to use her, but both bad gameplay design and serious mathematical errors are hindering her abilities severely. She's not even the only frame with this issue, since Octavia's Amp suffers from the same "reduced" damage multiplier and Chroma on the other hand is having his multiplier applied twice on secondary elemental damage (three times if it was innate to the weapon). Numbers in a game shouldn't lie, but they are here, and they're not being addressed at all.

[Nytrax]

3 minutes ago, Raspberri said:

Actually, Soma Prime is starting to fall behind due to power creep (mostly by shotguns, although Hunter Munitions will keep it in relevance for another while). That aside, Mirage is far from strong, and I have given many examples where she is just utterly inferior. If the weapon damage multiplier were accurate, I would say that Mirage is good through lvl 150 enemies for a pure DPS build, but extensive testing has shown that her weapon damage multiplier is NOWHERE near what it shows, ever. Same goes for the damage resist, never even went remotely close to a 95% damage resist, not even in the darkest parts of any map.

Now back to your Soma Prime comment, if say the weapon through extensive testing was discovered to have only a 1.3x crit damage multiplier in Simulacrum despite the labeled 3.0x in Arsenal, then yes, I would want it "buffed" (more like fixed). But since Soma Prime doesn't have mathematical accuracy problems as far as I know, it's a completely irrelevant topic.

Also her clones are completely broken if you're using projectile weapons. They don't do almost any damage. 

[shootaman777]

2 minutes ago, Nytrax said:

Also her clones are completely broken if you're using projectile weapons. They don't do almost any damage. 

And that's with Hall of Malevolence, too, sadly.  Though, the projectile weapons not functioning properly with her clones is a product of the original Hall of Mirrors nerf, if I recall. 

Mirage is my favourite Warframe, but I never get the chance to use her since there's always another Warframe that's better for the mission in question.  Not only does she need consistency (I've long since given up on memorising every patch of light and dark on each room in every tileset, since it's a near impossible task), she needs her numbers straightened out. 

[Nytrax]

1 minute ago, shootaman777 said:

And that's with Hall of Malevolence, too, sadly.  Though, the projectile weapons not functioning properly with her clones is a product of the original Hall of Mirrors nerf, if I recall. 

Mirage is my favourite Warframe, but I never get the chance to use her since there's always another Warframe that's better for the mission in question.  Not only does she need consistency (I've long since given up on memorising every patch of light and dark on each room in every tileset, since it's a near impossible task), she needs her numbers straightened out. 

They actually fixed Hall of mirrors in patch 22.9.0. Its in the patch notes but now its bugged again for some reason.

[Raspberry]

5 minutes ago, shootaman777 said:

And that's with Hall of Malevolence, too, sadly.  Though, the projectile weapons not functioning properly with her clones is a product of the original Hall of Mirrors nerf, if I recall. 

Mirage is my favourite Warframe, but I never get the chance to use her since there's always another Warframe that's better for the mission in question.  Not only does she need consistency (I've long since given up on memorising every patch of light and dark on each room in every tileset, since it's a near impossible task), she needs her numbers straightened out. 

At this point, I mostly use Hall of Mirrors either to kill mobs of low-hp enemies faster, and/or just hope that the enemy mostly tries to shoot at the 4 distractions around me.

Memorizing is pointless when a Heavy Gunner is sitting on that ideal patch of brightly lit ground. A slow-paced stealth/survival game would make better use of this light/dark mechanic, but Warframe isn't like that at all. Camping is for farming resources, and stealth is pretty necessarily complemented by sleep abilities to deal with mobs in tight areas. This light/dark mechanic really seems outdated, I have a feeling this had been implemented before Parkour 2.0 was released.

[shootaman777]

28 minutes ago, Raspberri said:

At this point, I mostly use Hall of Mirrors either to kill mobs of low-hp enemies faster, and/or just hope that the enemy mostly tries to shoot at the 4 distractions around me.

Memorizing is pointless when a Heavy Gunner is sitting on that ideal patch of brightly lit ground. A slow-paced stealth/survival game would make better use of this light/dark mechanic, but Warframe isn't like that at all. Camping is for farming resources, and stealth is pretty necessarily complemented by sleep abilities to deal with mobs in tight areas. This light/dark mechanic really seems outdated, I have a feeling this had been implemented before Parkour 2.0 was released.

Parkour 2.0 came out just before/with Equinox and the Tyl Regor boss fight rework.  So, yes, your assessment of the situation is on point- it's an old mechanic, more suitable to a slow-paced stealth/survival game.  Whether or not it's 'outdated' is a matter for speculation, however. 

Memorising is not useless, even if there's a Heavy Gunner on that patch of light.  One ground pound from a melee puts that Heavy Gunner on the ground, the time to get up from which can be used to occupy the patch of light with the Heavy Gunner and destroy them. 

Edited January 26, 2018 by shootaman777

[Jarriaga]

Since this is a Mirage feedback/rant thread, I'll add my own:

Hall of Mirror clones actively interfere with Melee combos, particularly so with a big weapon like the Galatine. If a clone hits an enemy it won't increase the combo counter even if the enemy dies. It won't even "refresh" the combo duration timer so you can at least try to hit something with Mirage herself and build/save your combo. Eventually you will lose your combo extremely fast because your clones are not letting you hit anything, which interferes with Blood Rush and Weeping Woulds/Condition Overload builds.

There's no mention of this anywhere that can confirm if this is a bug or intentional, but if this is indeed intentional then it's yet another handicap limiting Mirage's potential.

Edited January 26, 2018 by Jarriaga

[MuscleBeach]

Fix her UI buff display at the very least... Not only do I not have control of my buffs, I don't know how much of them I'm getting. When everything is a mystery, I don't feel like I'm playing a Warframe with a strategy. Honestly, the issues that Mirage has feels like she's still in Alpha testing still. 

[DeliciousDoob69]

I've said this in other threads, but it really upsets me that they dropped Mirage prime the way they did. DE pretty much didn't want to take the time to rework Zephry because of the holidays, but they still wanted the money, so they dropped Mirage prime because she has a more comprehensive kit. Unlike out last two primed frames however they didn't look at Mirage at all, they gave her a crappy gem and animation change and called it a day. Now that the holidays are over they need to take a serious look Mirage and her issues rather than just counting it as some grand sucsess. 

SO AGGRIVATING  

[(PSN)CoolD2108]

vor 6 Stunden schrieb AperoBeltaTwo:

Are you seriously complaining that TWO of the most powerful weapon buffs in the game aren't powerful enough? I get when you say the light\dark thing is gimmicky and unreliable, but when you're seriously saying that's her damage buff is weaker than that of a chroma... are you even serious?

 Mirage has two completely useless abilities that need a rework. Mirage needs a tweak to the way her buff works mechanically - sure thing. But she's not weaker than other frames. No, seriously, she's one of the strongest frames in the game and her damage output is truely godly. And that's even without the melee weapons! 

With her strong buffs, she can't utilice due to the enviremental restrictions, to play melee, she can't use since her clones don't generate combo.

Ayyy....you actually play her or only read the wiki cause she plays on around 1/10 of what's listed there.

[Kadishia]

Hall of Mirrors are suppose to help put off pressure on Mirage while her illusions will takes the gunfire. I use that all the time and it increases her survival rate so much higher since the enemies  are focusing on 4 more illusions. Keep this running all the time she can just run around without worries of taking fire with exception of a few bullets hitting or AOE weapon hit you.

Mirage isn't meant for tanking damage.

[Jarriaga]

10 minutes ago, Prismcore said:

Mirage isn't meant for tanking damage.

"I see the Sentients crashing down on her, dying in overwhelming numbers. Now she's out of energy, I'm telling her to go but she's laughing, tearing their heads off as they swarm." - Hidden Messages Quest

Her lore flat-out calls her a Sentient killing death machine. She should at least be consistent with her damage buffs rather than handicapped.

[Ailyene]

Yeah, Eclipse and Hall of Mirrors look really flashy and show lots of numbers or very high numbers in the UI so its good at misleading people who don't actually play her into thinking she's better than she is.  Kind of like her theme: its a trick of the light.

First, Eclipse UI is extremely misleading, displaying unattainable theoretical maximum buff values instead of the actual values which could go lower than 10% of the displayed value and is almost certainly lower than 1/3 for its damage buff in 90%+ of situations.  The unreliable nature of its damage reduction makes it completely unusable in situations wherever she'd want it since there's no way to know if 95% is actually 65% or 10% (it is almost never actually 95%), one might keep her alive and the other will get her dead.  Its skill description also does not mention the mechanic of scaling off of lighting at all further confusing things for newer players using her.  The entire Eclipse skill feels like its trying to be and incorporate too many things at once and so fails at being anything practical/reliable as a result to me.

Second, Hall of Mirrors has been constantly bugged for many months and has not worked with any of the normally recommended weapons for it during that duration. 

And finally, as a full DPS frame she should be doing more damage than a multi-role (DPS + Tank/Stealth + Support + CC) warframe but she doesn't, in my testing in the Simulacrum she would always come out around the level of an equally modded Octavia and Rhino.  Even with Maiming Strike Atterax melee both an equally modded Rhino and Octavia equally match Mirage (Eclipse + Hall of Mirrors) consistently in the simulacrum in my testing (used level 150 Napalms, level 50 Battalysts, level 150 Vomvalysts in my tests).  Hypothetical non-bugged Chroma would still do more than 3 times Rhino's damage if you used him as a guidepost for where a pure DPS frame should be, but even balancing around Rhino instead she does not have a way to consistently and reliably get Rhino level DPS in actual missions.

 

 

 

[AperoBeltaTwo]

5 hours ago, Raspberri said:

Yes, Mirage's damage buff is weaker than Chroma's. The numbers that the game tells you? They're a lie. Chroma's multiplies twice for secondary elements, so for example, a 400% damage multiplier on a radiation Lanka is actually 1600%. Mirage on the other hand says it's a base 200% multiplier, but it's actually lower, and none of us can figure it out. Many have tried, and the math never made sense, but what was always consistent was that it was lesser. Same with damage resist. At this point, it's likely a mixture of "not standing in the brightest/darkest spot" of a tileset, along with the damage multiplier not being applied to some damage-increasing weapon mods. Octavia's 4 ability (Amp) also suffers this exact same issue, except that at least that ability doesn't rely on something as stupid as map lighting.

 You forget that hall of mirrors and damage buff stack. If you have a weapon that deal aoe damage or something like an amprex that chains between enemies you'll deal much more damage than chroma could ever hope and in a huge area of effect.

 The issue with map lighting is the same issue with other environmentally affected abilities. I don't deny it. It should be fixed. But you cannot seriously say that mirage has a weak damage buff. Even if there was only Hall of mirrors, with the amount of power strength you could put on Mirage, her damage would be amazing.

[AperoBeltaTwo]

1 hour ago, (PS4)CoolD2108 said:

With her strong buffs, she can't utilice due to the enviremental restrictions, to play melee, she can't use since her clones don't generate combo.

Ayyy....you actually play her or only read the wiki cause she plays on around 1/10 of what's listed there.

-__- You want a x5 combo counter on top of 2 damage buffs? I played mirage ofc. And rarely ever had a problem with light\shadows pathing. Generally because most of the maps are either one or the other, so you either have a damage buff or a survivability buff. Ye, it's an annoying gimmick, but if you did actually play Mirage yourself you should know that it doesn't affect her much at all. Especially within the content we have in the game right now. She could easily be built for 299+ power strength with about ~50 seconds + duration on hall of mirrors and the damage buff. 299 power is 60% damage from reflections. That's a LOT even without the damage buff. Especially with a melee weapon. 

[MuscleBeach]

36 minutes ago, AperoBeltaTwo said:

 You forget that hall of mirrors and damage buff stack. If you have a weapon that deal aoe damage or something like an amprex that chains between enemies you'll deal much more damage than chroma could ever hope and in a huge area of effect.

 The issue with map lighting is the same issue with other environmentally affected abilities. I don't deny it. It should be fixed. But you cannot seriously say that mirage has a weak damage buff. Even if there was only Hall of mirrors, with the amount of power strength you could put on Mirage, her damage would be amazing.

Hall of Mirrors only deals the weapons base damage. It's like the opposite of Chroma's damage bug. So no, it's not dealing that much more damage, especially when they shoot the way they're facing and not where you're aiming (which is why every mirage has to run around with arca plasmors and grenade launchers). 

Mirage's least important issue is her damage output. Her issues:

• UI doesn't show what you're actually getting on Eclipse. 
• You can't actually obtain Eclipse buff amount shown on the UI. 
• Standing in specific lighting is impractical on a warframe that can only survive by keeping moving (which means not being in the lighting you want) and needing her damage reduction.
• Tied in with the above point, you can't reliably control what buff you get. 

The entire warframe conflicts to her own play-style. Yes, these issues are tied into her damage buff as well but the reason we, or at least I, complain is that her lack of damage reduction leaves her awfully fragile, even with mirrors on. I don't care about her Eclipse damage buff; any weapon can take me to endgame without a warframe's damage buffs. 

[Internet_Toughguy]

Agree with the OP pretty much completely about the state of Mirage. She does look nice though, so there is that!

[(XBOX)Demon Intellect]

You are calling the frame that has gotten more than a couple of weapons nerfed into the ground underpowered? Lol