… and It annoys me a little bit.
- If you’ve got a Mage, you use it.
- If you don’t, I’m sure you’ve seen it used.
You tend to notice when your Mage population instantly expands.
Where there was one, there are now four or five (add a few more if you have some VooDoo Gnomes along for the ride).
Three or four of them throwing frostbolts like snowballs, the other slightly more intelligent one mixing it up with their flavor of the month spell of choice.
If you thought the Mage overpopulation was confusing, imagine how the mobs feel, whether lackeys or bosses they now don’t know who to hit.
We are just a little vain
Mages love them for a variety of reasons, not the least being 4 or 5 naked Gnomes is always better than 1.
We get to do a bit of extra damage, and just for the record, if there is one thing Mages like doing it’s damage.
Apart from the frostbolts getting thrown, the images adopt the Mage’s threat, if only temporarily. This means the Mage can escalate their damage output to ridiculous levels, if only temporarily. Followed by Invisibility, the Mage is only limited by their damage potential.
Mobs hate these images, I think it’s something akin to being woken up after a seriously heavy night on the booze by your ex-wife demanding your overdue alimony payments. You see more than one of the annoying buggers and you just want them to go away.
I have happily solo’d mobs before while they wail mindlessly on my mindless mirror images. Go on, hit that one while I fill you full of fire!
It doesn’t matter whether they are smarter than the average mob, when it comes to face pummeling and fireballing, the mirror images always look like the right choice.
We are too Special!
Unless, well unless they are going to do something “special”.
By special I don’t mean anything unusual, although they are skills rarely seen applied by players in Northrend. I’m talking about CC (Crowd Control).
- Boss throws down an Ice Prison – it only has eyes for you.
- Mob has a web to wrap – it won’t be your mirror images that are caught.
- Knock back & stun – the mob is knocking on your chest.
- Boss wants to wrap you in chains and tuck you in for a good fight’s sleep – goodnight Mage.
My Problem may be yours as well
My problem with this is simple.
Normally when you bring out your carbon copies, it’s because you are either in a little trouble, or you intend to ramp up the damage.
If you are in trouble, well you don’t need the extra aggravation of CC.
If you are ramping up the damage you are going to use everything at your disposal… Ivy Veins, Combustion, Trinkets, Heroism… Everything… Now is the time you want a clear uninterrupted 20-30 seconds of button pushing frenzy.
But that rapidly degenerates into button pressing frustration when your screen is filled with…
You can’t use that ability while sleeping
You can’t use that ability while stunned
You can’t use that ability while web wrapped
You “can’t use that ability” while your mirror images do shite damage because somehow the mob saw through your clever illusion for just this one ability.
Invalid Target?
Now I am assuming there is just a minor oversight in the coding. They ensured that the damaging attacks got confused and were directed at the mirror images, but they missed the block of code with the non-damaging abilities.
Maybe they missed the bit of code where it says Invalid Target
Thus when selecting mobs to CC, the mirror images don’t even enter the /random roll.
I would like this changed (please Blizzard, I don’t ask for much, often… Mmmm well I haven’t in a while anyway).
If you won’t just simply misdirect the CC attack at the mirror image when the Mage is targeted, at least include them as valid choices of targets until the spell is cast.
Pick a Mage, any Mage.
I’m happy for you to CC them, I’m even happy to lose their threat buffer for the duration of the snare, but don’t automatically puck me out of the crowd of Gnomes.
If the are invalid targets, let the mob discover that too late… Think of it as 100% resistance. After all I created some illusions specifically to fool you… You got fooled… More fool you, see you next cooldown!
There QQ complete.
I just hate it when I’m low on the meter because the mobs can’t respect how truly awesome I am.
I am awesome you know…
If you don’t believe me ask Jong.. he thinks I’m awesome and if Mr. AWESOME thinks I’m awesome… I must be awesome.
Epic Advice
Speaking of Epic Advice…
What? I wasn’t?
Well I am now!
I took the Epic Advice of the Epic Blogger Matticus and went and checked out Epic Advice.
See I told you I was talking about Epic Advice
Anyway, go get some of your own, while contributing tons yourself, especially if you are a Mage or a Shaman, cause I care about you most.
Gnomer and Out!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/10/23/
mirror-image-some-mobs-arent-fooled/
Some mobs choose MI all the time over the mage. The Chronos guy in Culling of Stratholme will usually butcher 2 of the 3 before hitting me. Any random impale effect also seems to target them willy nilly (the magnataur in the trophy room fight in UK for example). The same choice logic seems to apply to spirit wolves.
The problem is, MI usually doesn’t do enough damage as any other spell you could cast in that GCD. So if you’re not in trouble, the only useful time to cast it is when you’re moving.
They only inherit your spellpower in terms of buffs, so any additional haste or crit you have going on is wasted on them. Cast them before the Bloodlust hits (not Heroism – it’s BLOODLUST!!!) so as not to waste a GCD of your prime casting.
Now… come 4-piece T10 it looks like they will be worth casting…