Condition Mirage

May 2023

Due to the high amount of Confusion this build can apply, its damage output is unrivaled on fast-attacking bosses such as Cairn, Soulless Horror and Largos Twins. Even in other encounters, it’s still a strong build that offers constant DPS during longer phases. Due to the slower DPS ramp up time, it’s sub-optimal for bosses that have shorter phases. It’s hard to learn and master since its damage output relies on proper clone management and a fast non-looped rotation, that has to be adapted during the encounter to maximize it’s effectiveness.

Build Fundamentals

Ambush and Endurance Management

Mirage uses endurance as an offensive resource. Whenever you Dodge or pick up a Mirage Mirror (can be created by Crystal Sands), you will gain Mirage Cloak which will give access to the ambush skill Imaginary Axes for you and your clones which is your most powerful ability. Because of this core mechanic, the build utilizes Superior Sigil of Energy in both weapon sets to gain access to Ambush skill as much as possible. As a general principle, you never want to reach full Endurance in this build.

It’s very important to have Regeneration since it will increase your DPS due to Illusionary Membrane and Chaotic Persistence.

Defensive Options

Since you’ll be mostly using your dodges offensively, you should try to learn certain boss patterns and timings of harder hitting attacks that you will need to play around. The most obvious choice is to just not use up a dodge whenever you know there is an attack incoming. Your other defensive options include:

• Weapon Swap to trigger Superior Sigil of Energy to gain an additional dodge.
• Using Cry of Frustration Distortion  instead of Cry of Frustration Mind Wrack to gain some invulnerability frames, this is kind of hard to pull off, but can be very worth it, you can also just use Distortion as a panic button, but it comes with a DPS loss if not used with Cry of Frustration first.
• Axes of Symmetry gives you some dodge frames as well, try to combine this with dodging attacks to be as efficient as possible.

Clones

Clones use your Auto-attack chain and a worse version of Imaginary Axes whenever you gain Mirage Cloak. They also use Axes of Symmetry whenever you do. Because of this interaction, not interrupting attack animations of your clones is a major goal of every Mirage build. The rotation will maintain 3 clones most of the time only swaying away from this for shattering Cry of Frustration after which you would want to generate back 3 clones as soon as possible mainly with Self-Deception.

You can summon clones in the following ways:

• Lingering Thoughts generates a clone after a short delay
• Using a deception skill when you have at least one clone (Crystal Sands, Jaunt)
• Phantasmal Mage and Phantasmal Duelist both generate a clone once the phantasm is done casting

Note: that summoning a new clone while already having 3 clones will destroy the oldest one.

Clones don’t have Quickness, making their cast times much slower than yours. If you don’t give your clones enough time to finish their attacks between each usage of Imaginary Axes or Axes of Symmetry, you can cancel their own usage of Imaginary Axes or Axes of Symmetry resulting in a big DPS loss.

For that reason, avoid the following skill sequences:

• Imaginary AxesAxes of Symmetry
• Imaginary AxesJaunt
• Using Jaunt or Dodge during Axes of Symmetry

Rotation Tips

• Using Lingering Thoughts, Phantasmal Duelist or Magic Bullet  while inside an ethereal field will apply confusion through swirl and projectile finishers resulting in more DPS.
• Using Signet of Midnight at the very end of a fight results in a slight DPS increase due to the blind applying confusion for a final burst tick.
• Using Magic Bullet  while a boss is casting an ability counts as interrupting them, decreasing your cooldowns through Chaotic Interruption which results in an earlier usage of Axes of Symmetry or Phantasmal Duelist

Crowd Control

• Magic Bullet = 250 defiance break to the primary target, 200 to the first bounce.
• Phantasmal Mage
• Diversion = 100-400 defiance break depending on the amount of clones, you always count as a single “clone” yourself.
• Signet of Domination = huge DPS loss, only use it as a last ditch effort.