Mirage seems overly strong

[TOP CAT]

Some observations about Mirage, specifically:

#1 Ability (Tornado):
- Essentially a Warp stone + Wraith Ult all in one, with some bullet evasion thrown in for good measure, with an incredibly short cooldown (considering it is not an Ult).
- I believe this ability could do with functioning more like Dynamo's shockwave, something that knocks the opponent up into the air, but not necessarily a hold.

#3 Ability (Djinn's Mark):
- Feels overly strong when considering his base weapon damage.
- Debuff Remover will still consume the stack all the same, making a savvy player waste their time trying to come up with an intuitive counter.
- It also acts as a forced delay for players opting to use Healing Rite to counter the incredibly high base game weapon damage Mirage has in his arsenal, as until the stack is conusmed, you cannot activate Healing Rite without the heal being dispelled.
- The movement reduction is an absolute headache to deal with towards the late game by removing any momentum from the affected player, and it seems almost every shot/every other shot increases the multiplier, so it creates a stun lock of sorts. Excluding the scaling spirit damge side of this ability, the movement reduction alone seems very powerful.
- I believe the cooldown before the multiplier is added should be shorter, and/or the stack should be consumed sooner.
- Perhaps a personal thing for me, but it's kind of annoying having a big purple number sitting on top of the character, especially when there's so little to do to avoid gaining it.

Mirages Base Weapon:
- Coupled with Mirage's 3 ability (Djinn's Mark), Mirage's base weapon hits like an absolute truck across the board: high base weapon damage, large capacity magazine, and a fire rate which is not to be frowned at.
- Early game with one or two tier 1 weapon items, a Mirage missing all of his abilities but hitting a lot of body/headshots is much more dangerous to deal with (for me) than a skilled headshot hunting Lady Geist, Vindicta or Grey Talon who are hitting their abilities.

I'm an average player skilled player who tends to usually top out on my team on whichever PUB match I'm thrown into (as a Lash main) with around 200 hours in the game, so perhaps I'm missing something obvious with regards to a counter, but right now it seems to me Mirage in average hands is wiping the floor with most lobbies.

I'd be interested to hear how everyone else is getting on with him. Thanks for reading.

 

[Dashiell]

His first skill is not a stun unlike Wraith's ult, you can shoot back or use debuff remover to be free, not to mention aoe path is very thin so you can dodge preemptively if it's not surprise attack.

While I agree that his slow is annoying, dmg wise his third has huge fall off late game due to poor scaling without investment into improved burst and even then it's kinda clunky.

Multiplier has 2-2,5 sec cd between stacks that can't be lowered with items so your feeling is wrong. Which makes your 5th dash point weird as it would increase his early game harassment even more which he already excels at. As for for debuff remover triggering dmg it's a bug.

I haven't seen Mirage scoring top in anything so far which is exactly how he feels, great early harasser but without exact teamwork to maximize his ult potential he falls off really hard late game where currently spirit damage is a king thanks to lack of mitigation compared to omnipresent bullet dmg mitigation.

I recommand you buying Reactive Barrier (1250 souls) which gives 400 bullet shield every time you get hit by his first skill, that effectively nullifies his dmg opportunity before you can get debuff remover. Other than that Extra health gives 160 hp and Restorative Shot gives 440hp per minute if you land all shots off cd which helps early game.

 

[Propane]

Some observations about Mirage, specifically:

#1 Ability (Tornado):
- Essentially a Warp stone + Wraith Ult all in one, with some bullet evasion thrown in for good measure, with an incredibly short cooldown (considering it is not an Ult).
- I believe this ability could do with functioning more like Dynamo's shockwave, something that knocks the opponent up into the air, but not necessarily a hold.

#3 Ability (Djinn's Mark):
- Feels overly strong when considering his base weapon damage.
- Debuff Remover will still consume the stack all the same, making a savvy player waste their time trying to come up with an intuitive counter.
- It also acts as a forced delay for players opting to use Healing Rite to counter the incredibly high base game weapon damage Mirage has in his arsenal, as until the stack is conusmed, you cannot activate Healing Rite without the heal being dispelled.
- The movement reduction is an absolute headache to deal with towards the late game by removing any momentum from the affected player, and it seems almost every shot/every other shot increases the multiplier, so it creates a stun lock of sorts. Excluding the scaling spirit damge side of this ability, the movement reduction alone seems very powerful.
- I believe the cooldown before the multiplier is added should be shorter, and/or the stack should be consumed sooner.
- Perhaps a personal thing for me, but it's kind of annoying having a big purple number sitting on top of the character, especially when there's so little to do to avoid gaining it.

Mirages Base Weapon:
- Coupled with Mirage's 3 ability (Djinn's Mark), Mirage's base weapon hits like an absolute truck across the board: high base weapon damage, large capacity magazine, and a fire rate which is not to be frowned at.
- Early game with one or two tier 1 weapon items, a Mirage missing all of his abilities but hitting a lot of body/headshots is much more dangerous to deal with (for me) than a skilled headshot hunting Lady Geist, Vindicta or Grey Talon who are hitting their abilities.

I'm an average player skilled player who tends to usually top out on my team on whichever PUB match I'm thrown into (as a Lash main) with around 200 hours in the game, so perhaps I'm missing something obvious with regards to a counter, but right now it seems to me Mirage in average hands is wiping the floor with most lobbies.

I'd be interested to hear how everyone else is getting on with him. Thanks for reading.

Yea mirage is 100% unbalanced, I think its mostly the early-game lifesteal that lets him snowball stupid easily and tower dive like its nothing, I have yet to win or even do well in lane against him all you can do is back up and let him have the tower, needs to be nerfed hard ASAP

the guy above me points out that he scales poorly but it really does not matter because in the average lobby a game against him is over before he can possible be outscaled, reactive barrier is only a viable counter for laning phase in solo lanes, in duo lanes or late game you get bursted to death instantly when he hits you with his 1st ability.

Furthermore, his ability to teleport anywhere is just not well thought out, as soon as he unlocks ult and wins lane (inevitable) he can just tp to low health champs and rack up free kills for an easy snowball.

For me at least it's gotten to the point where I consider just leaving when I see mirage in the lobby, whoever is in lane against him will almost invariably feed him, regardless of champ or skill, there simply is no counter for the average player.

 

[larswillemsen]

He deals zero damage. Djin's mark deals pathetic damage unless he heavily invests into Spirit damage, but nothing else his kit offers has enough scaling to warrant doing that. It is nearly impossible to get more than 4 stacks on someone due to how atrociously slow the timer is between stacks. It does last VERY long however (very annoying to play against). To deal any form of damage he needs to either invest into Pulse or go gun damage.

His laning phase is OK. I find him comparable to Shiv. He's not a bully, but he's not weak either. Pretty much middle of the road. I find his ultimate to be very weak. Omnipresence is a great tool to have, but Deadlock is very deathball heavy and his ultimate just doesn't do much there unless he dies first. His tornado is arguably the strongest basic skill in the entire game right now. Beetles is also very strong, and offers extreme value if he manages to actually use the health steal (i.e. soak damage and/or kill the receiver).

I find him to be very boring to play. Design wise he seems most comfortable being a tank that disrupts the frontline, which also seems to work really well (gun build is also popular, but honestly I think that's just a gimmick), but he just... doesn't really do all that much. He tornadoes once, then hits beetles and runs around awkwardly trying to stay in Pulse range. It's effective, but very boring and one-note. Djin's mark is nowhere near powerful enough to build around.

I don't find him annoying to play against either. He's very obvious in what he does, as opposed to heroes that can initiate from anywhere at any time. He's most comparable to Mo and Krill drafting wise. If they further nerf his Tornado he will be dumpster tier, as the hero has 2 effective abilities to contribute with.

 

[bambino326mob]

I think the problem with the polarity of Mirage opinions is a matchup issue. If you main a lot of gun heroes like Haze, Wraith, Infernus who start weak Mirage is the spawn of satan. The issue is at level one where he can pick one ability to directly counter you, does he need poke to keep your your hero away? pick 3, does he need sustain to stay in lane against your long range poke? 2! Are you fast and do heavy bullet damage? start with 1! For the first 5 or so minutes he can counter whatever you want to do to him. And while yes his gun damage is lackluster that only matters when items are involved, most characters are in the 500-700 hp range, most dont do a ton of spirit damage without a combo/setup. Pair that with his high end falloff and 2nd fastest bullet velocity and bullet damage doesnt matter if he can hit shots that you cant. So unless your a hero who can just ignore him, or have a ton of close range burst like Pocket/Bebop where you wish he would try and engage you can get bullied hard.

As someone who mains Haze/Mcginnis on Haze i ask for a swap to avoid him, on Mc i slowplay for the first 5 minutes using wall and heal and once i have turret charges i can push him out and zone.

Overall I think he needs tuning but im fine with a hero who starts as a menace but has low impact later unless he builds counters/items. I don't think pairing warpstone, evasion and a root into a single ability is healthy but idk what the alternative would be without a complete overhaul of the ability.

 

[SaintYin]

Mirage is an early game monster. Fire Scarabs is ~160 healing without items during the laning phase (220+ if in duo lane), on a 20 second cooldown. His gun hits an easy 40 per headshot. Mark with 1 skillpoint is a full second of 80% slow as long as you activate before your second shot lands. Tornado is basically a guaranteed kill if the opponent doesn't respect its range and they're half health.

With that said, Mirage is trash mid- and late-game, and if you lose to one it is absolutely a skill diff. Opponents used to panic and pretend the root was a stun, now they know to shoot back, activate items, or parry while rooted. Opponents used to waltz out when they had a big purple target on them even though Mirage had 8 spirit items. Now you're lucky to proc a x4. Tornado used to be 2 base seconds, making it a Dynamo+refresher lite on 1/8th the cooldown. Now, you can't even sink shots into opponents between echo recasts, assuming opponents haven't bought debuff reducer/remover.

Mirage is arguably one of the least-impactful heroes once people leave the laning phase. He can tip a 1v1 with teleport, but outside of that literally any other hero will be more useful, and there are heroes that actually have sufficient mobility to tip a 1v1 without needing teleport.

 

[Forlorn88]

Mirage is an early game king but it's because his basic kit is so strong to compensate for his weak ult.

The ult would be much better if you could teleport to friendly towers. As it stands, it's good for ganks but once the team fights start it's basically useless. It's not even good for chasing down opponents because the location of your warp point is so random. Sometimes you'll click on an enemy and appear 50 yards away facing a wall.

Early game, Djinn's mark is insanely strong. With no damage dropoff it does more damage at lv. 1 than any other ability at a long range. With 8 stacks it's 128 dmg when players have 550~ hp, that's 1/5 of your health bar from a passive. Some heroes cannot cope with this making Mirage very matchup dependent.

I would suggest weakening Djinn's mark early game, but have it scale more for the late game.

 

[Alferno]

i totally Agree with you, the Stacking is just Way to Op in my opinion...

 

[Propane]

I think the problem with the polarity of Mirage opinions is a matchup issue. If you main a lot of gun heroes like Haze, Wraith, Infernus who start weak Mirage is the spawn of satan. The issue is at level one where he can pick one ability to directly counter you, does he need poke to keep your your hero away? pick 3, does he need sustain to stay in lane against your long range poke? 2! Are you fast and do heavy bullet damage? start with 1! For the first 5 or so minutes he can counter whatever you want to do to him. And while yes his gun damage is lackluster that only matters when items are involved, most characters are in the 500-700 hp range, most dont do a ton of spirit damage without a combo/setup. Pair that with his high end falloff and 2nd fastest bullet velocity and bullet damage doesnt matter if he can hit shots that you cant. So unless your a hero who can just ignore him, or have a ton of close range burst like Pocket/Bebop where you wish he would try and engage you can get bullied hard.

As someone who mains Haze/Mcginnis on Haze i ask for a swap to avoid him, on Mc i slowplay for the first 5 minutes using wall and heal and once i have turret charges i can push him out and zone.

Overall I think he needs tuning but im fine with a hero who starts as a menace but has low impact later unless he builds counters/items. I don't think pairing warpstone, evasion and a root into a single ability is healthy but idk what the alternative would be without a complete overhaul of the ability.

The problem with this is your tower is gone within those first 5 minutes because you cannot set foot in the actual lane without getting lifted and and raped, even the tankier characters that should stand a chance are pretty easily bullied by him, even mcginnis isn't a viable counter because he can easily outheal turret damage during laning..