https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pH0NrTtOYTS1E_bGteZSnUa03_pTAlgqeR1QMW_s3RQ/edit?usp=sharing
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Hello everybody to the sophomore guide! Goo’s Guide to Mira, that is, my guide to Mira, for starters. As you may remember from last month’s guide (Kapkan), the Preface is a recurring section in all of my guides where I address some of the things surrounding the project in general, like reader feedback, context of writing and publishing, and other general thoughts. If you don’t care and wanna get to the actual guide, skip to the introduction (next section).

First of all I want to thank everyone for showing so much interest for the Kapkan guide; I am very excited to keep making and writing these guides for the Siege community. Look at this:



I also want to thank personally to my Patreon supporters: Michal Grochowski & Bumi665. The fact that they were so trusting in the project to invest in it right from the start is a huge motivation for me; and I’ve been working extra hard to make the Patreon project as reader-engaging as I can because of that. Shoutout to them!

Shoutout also to everyone up on Steam that made me not regret porting the guide over to the steam platform (from now on porting them all :D). Even managed to make it to Top 1 Rainbow 6 Siege guide on Steam for a whole week!

As far as I could tell, the formatting worked well enough for the Kapkan guide; which was, for all intents and purposes, a test guide; so not many changes have been made to my overall system for guide structure. I’ve just decided to go a little easier on the Patreon plugs; just moved it all the way to the End Note. You’ll be able to find the link to the Patreon project down there if you’re looking for it (it’s also on the cover page along all the relevant links, such as night version and steam version of this very guide).

Either way; you know the deal: Index is over to the right. The guide is long. You’re not meant to read the entire thing if you don’t want to or need to; but you can go and click on the titles of the sections to just jump around as you like.

Also, since this is no longer the first guide, I’m now keeping a list with all the links for past guides. This “archive” is public and accessible via this link[docs.google.com]. That list will be updated every time a new guide comes out, so if you want to check for new guides without going on Reddit you can just bookmark that link and you’ll have handy links to all available guides whenever you go there. Patreon supporters get new guides and any updates emailed directly (and two weeks earlier than everyone else, wink wink).

Regarding this guide in particular; I think I went deep into really conceptual stuff about angles and the mirrors, especially when talking about landscaping. So, if you’re interested in In-Depth info on particularly unintuitive concepts regarding lines of sight; you’ll enjoy this guide. Really the sections that make up the second half of the guide are in my opinion, the meat of the guide if you’re looking for detailed stuff; more than the first half, which is more generally oriented to beginners; and to establish beginner concepts such as the basic logic of defense and anchoring.

For the first time I’ve color-coded the Index for different levels of complexity so check that out if you wanna!

We’ve got a lotta ground to cover so let’s get started:

Ok, where do we start…? Mira is a really interesting operator, for me at least, not because of any attractive gadget related mechanic she has, but because her addition to the game roster drastically changed one of the most structured concepts that existed to Siege before then, which is anchoring. Now, admittedly, this becomes more and more evident at higher levels of play, where defense is generally favored (as long as an overall good site is being played), and breaking into defender setups becomes trickier and trickier. This is not to imply Mira is far less effective when picked in a more average-skilled game; but it is to imply that it is because of the possibilities that an operator like Mira brings to the table that various gadget balancing decisions are taken in favor of the attacking team; such as the implementation of Dokkaebi’s Logic Bombs during White Noise, or any of the more recent Operation Chimera examples, Finka & Lion. In a nutshell:

Mira is a 3 armor, 1 speed defender whose main role is to create and take advantage of one-sided gunfights, made possible by landscaping and her unique gadget (the black mirrors), with the purpose of preventing hostiles from entering or taking control of a particular room (usually the defended site or an adjacent room). Fitting this definition, she is a very good example of what an anchor’s job is, but at the same time, she, inside the defended site, doesn’t play exactly as one. As instead of using positioning and angle advantage to take out entering hostiles; she uses her one-way windows to aggressively shut down enemy movement.

Because she brings all these added elements (to anchoring) I think that, even if there’s a lot of technicalities to play Mira like, in the best way possible, abusing mirrors to the max and getting nitro kills and all that; the fundamentals are relatively straightforward and intuitive, unlike something like an ideal play-by-play on how to use a flexible, multi-purpose operator such as Smoke or breaking down something as generally complex as roaming as a defender. For this reason, Mira is my first recommendation for beginners looking for DLC operators purchase suggestions; at least as their first DLC defender, for sure.

Let’s talk a little about Pros & Cons for Mira as an operator, to know what to expect from attackers (in the cons) and to know what to capitalize on (in the pros).

Starting with the cons, just because the pros are far more apparent as they are directly related to mirror use. Cons on the other hand are more related to Mira herself.

First of all, Mira has one of the most limited effective ranges in all of the defending team, excluding people running shotguns, because of her 1 speed and also because of her weapons. The Vector has very low damage per bullet and it gets even worse with distance (dropping drastically past the 18 meter mark), which makes it so really the only way you’re ever getting a kill from a long distance is with a clean headshot, and she has no ACOG, unlike other popular 3 armor defenders (Echo, Doc & Rook).

The fact that she can barely manage at mid-range is very, very noticeable in games where you are forced out of your anchoring position and away from your windows (they were shot open by enemies, or you’ve lost control of that area of the map, etc). So really the use of mirrors is the only thing keeping Mira even competitive in terms of gunfighting.

Balancing that out with a Pro; the Vector, despite all this, has a very high rate of fire which makes it ideal for the short-range, short-time-window peeks that Mira wants to be doing with the help of her Black Mirrors. Rate of fire helps the most because it increases the chances of you hitting a headshot even if the pre-aim wasn’t exactly on the mark; as you can quickly correct while hiding back behind cover and you have generally high chances of still getting at least 1 bullet to hit the target considering thirty billion bullets come out of the Vector per second.

Second Con to Mira, branching from her limited range, is the fact that she’s relatively restricted to a small and predictable area to operate in (anchoring by mirrors); which leads attackers to chucking frags, smokes, shooting Capitao Darts, all those sort of things, on you. If you’re paying attention, it would be pretty surprising to get killed by one of these attempts; but they will make you at least take some distance; which can chain into an attacker peeking your kill-hole or your door and killing you without leaving much room for you to react at all. This fault in the job of “manning a mirror” is sorta manageable if you are super aggro on your peeking so that enemies don’t even bother peeking with a frag on their hand; but if they get a blind spot on you or some weird angle and suddenly a candela comes in flying into the room it can be very problematic for sure.

A Pro that’s a really big deal is the fact that she can pre-aim and pre-set peeks or Nitro throws/activations in real time. I’ll go over this again later on the guide but the general idea is that in any other way you have as a Defender to directly look at defenders you have some sort of delay in the middle (for example any kind of camera, a Pulse scanner, etc; all have to pull a screen out) while the mirrors allow you to directly look at enemies with your gun in your hand, and that’s huge in terms of aggressive possibilities.

For simplicity, and for insane scrolling addicts, here’s a eye-grabbing list:

• Can pre-aim hostiles in real time.
  
• Is the best way defenders have for sustained area denial.
  
• Strong at short range/Strong at in-site firefights.

• Weak at medium to long range (Without Mirrors).
  
• Overall predictable positioning (So weak to fire bolts, Frags, etc).
  
• Can be shut-down just once for the entire round (Mirrors get breached and you basically lose that position).

Also, one last important thing to mention about her in the Introduction (as it’s going to be coming up a lot during the guide) is how Mira is very, very landscaping focused; and a lot of her tech and skill ceiling comes from managing holes and lines of sight.

“The Invisible Factor” is another recurring section in my guides, where I try to define and break down what is “the thing” that sets apart the way a particular operator is played and what is the thought process behind them; when compared to all of the rest. For Kapkan (last month’s guide) this was understanding the perspective of attackers, in order to set up more effective traps. For Mira, it has to do a lot with Map Landscaping and creating very awfully one sided encounters favoring defenders.

I dare say that because of this, Mira is one of the most DM independent operators in the game (for those unfamiliar, DM is a term used to describe the ability of a player for straight out fire-fighting another player; as in, a player with great DM is one that has good crosshair placements, good reactions, overall good aim, goes for headshots, etc). DM is 100% required to keep improving in Siege overall; but if there’s one defender that really does work without much DM it is Mira; as angles are already set up, you tend to have an advantage on peeks, and so on. What you’re going to need most is just a ton of awareness and understanding of lines of sight, landscaping; that sort of thing; to play a good Mira. Luckily, that’s just the sort of thing that you can teach in a guide; unlike DM, which is just raw practice, hardware related specifications & experience.

Here’s an interesting thing about Siege. You can generally say that whoever sees the other first, will win the gunfight; for this reason, the defense is so so much tactically stronger than the attacking side. In fact, in this game, the advantage of just being on the defense side is so large that attackers need all drones, and generally the more powerful gadgets in terms of intel; just because they are up against enemies who can literally just wait them out and know where they are going to come from, and they are the ones that have to break through (which is much harder than holding, if done properly). This advantage the defenders have by default of “being able to position themselves and wait out attackers so they see them first when entering a room” is just what the windows are for. They take it a step further basically. Instead of hiding in a corner and waiting for attackers to turn on said corner; you’re waiting behind a one-sided window, and actively covering an area while watching enemies that cannot see you directly.

If there’s one thing I can reduce the “Invisible factor” to is that, usually, site defense comes down to turning the site room and sometimes adjacent rooms, into fortified shells; while Mira allows certain parts of the room to become pillbox-like fronts, instead of going for the completely closing surfaces off approach; which sometimes is absolutely needed.

A bad Mira gives you window information of what’s going on outside the walls. A good Mira turns the “outside” the walls into a killzone.

Now, there are obviously exceptions (like windows to the exterior to help battery trick and that sort of thing), but still that should be the idea to take away from this section.

Let’s elaborate: A good Mira window placement changes everything about a room; it changes how defenders defend it, and how attackers go about attacking it. Mira windows are actually so strong as landscape modifyers that they make some unplayable sites actually an option. This is why Mira is seen so much in really high level of play; the windows will turn some already good sites to great sites; popular example: Border Armory; turning the wall from site to CCTV exterior into a literal death trap; having the door just next to the window. And being able to keep control of office.

Mira is an anchor; I’d say there’s no worse way to play her than roaming about as her (You’re away from your windows, you’re away any potential choke points you could stop dead just with a window anchor, and you’re roaming as a 3 armor with a small mag, low damage, and no ACOG).

So, as we all know by know, the role of an anchor is staying on site and making sure people don’t get in to plant/capture, etc. Depending on the skill level of the match, anchoring can be a little inconsistent because the first half of the round you’ll may barely make any enemy contact; and the second half, depending on your team, could be a horrible hold outnumbered by attackers because your roamers failed; or again, you doing nothing, because your roamers succeeded. Anyway, unlike some other common so called “Anchors”, like Mute or Rook; that will work when you get bored and start lurking about for kills; as Mira you’ll always have the combat advantage if you stay and properly anchor so roaming as Mira is discouraging by itself.

Other than just being an “Anchor”, Mira’s main task can be divided into particular moments in the round; however these will change quite a lot depending on the enemy team and how skilled they are. These are the basic objectives an attacking team has to accomplish to take control of the site and get the plant or whatever; your task is to adapt to whatever the current enemy objective is and shut it down or at least delay it as much as possible; until you either get killed, or you get pushed away from the position (by smokes, by your mirror getting popped open, whatever). These “objectives” can be stuff like hard breaching a site wall, getting rid of your mirror or whoever is “manning it”, opening the ceiling, taking out gadgets, etc.

You have to be paying attention to what the attacking team is up to so you can become that obstacle. And also, you have to familiarize yourself to what the common approach to a particular site is so you can place your mirrors accordingly (We are going to see Mirror placement in a bit but the idea is that you’re not waiting there expecting to stop a hard breach when defending a site that’s never or very rarely breached). After all you only have 2 mirrors and can only cover one at a time.

If the people you’re up against are any competent you won’t get bored by anchoring, you’ll be stopping breachers, peeking on people, defending your mirrors and trying to keep people out all at the same time. Mira is one anchor that takes up a lot of manpower just to force her to forfeit a position.

We’re taking a closer look at what this all means when we talk some window placements; as your “role” sorta changes from position to position you hold with mirrors.

Let’s talk about the guns (& equipment) for a bit. This is one part of the guide that I changed a bit from last month’s guide to try and shorten it up as one user commented how there really as no need for a full section about the GSH-18. Fair enough:

“The Loadout” is what I call the generally accepted gun & equipment choices for a particular operator, for Mira it is the following:

• Vector .45 ACP (With Compensator & Vertical Grip)
  
• ITA12S (With Laser)
  
• Nitro Cell

The Vector can equip any 1x sight, and even has decent Iron sights; so it’s up to you. I recommend Reflex because of the smaller housing, Holographic is not half bad though.

The ITA12S is really just a landscaping tool; I recommend the Laser so the spread at about 4 meters is focused and I am able to makes holes first try every time. Engaging enemies with it is pretty much like resorting to your knife when all other options fail so having the laser give away your position is not a thing to worry about.

Nitro cell over Deployable Shield should be a given. Mira can really use Nitro cells in combo with her windows to get rid of people in blind spots, behind cover, or to do pre-placed nitro setups.

Deployables do have some synergy with Mira’s windows but it very rarely warrants not going for a Nitro cell, if you wanna get of those Deployable shield setups going just as for one from a teammate and tell them where to place them.

Their main use is to break lines of sight from a transitted window or long angle for an attacker and the back of your mirror; so that they may not shoot the canister. For example here:


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The reason I place the shield way back on the mirror is because I don’t want it to become an obstacle for me moving around when I’m manning the mirror; I just want it to be in the way of the canister from the line of sight that’s all.

Other guns not generally picked up on Mira are the ITA12L (Shotgun Primary) & the USP40 (Pistol Secondary).

Now, the ITA12L is not a particularly bad shotgun, it’s a pump action, pretty decent at 1 shot kills or injures up to like 8 or 9 meters; with relative fast pumps. It’s not the best shotgun but it certainly can be described as a weaker version of the GIGN’s SG-CQB; which still makes it a usable shotgun. However, by not picking the Vector you’re squandering the potential of your mirrors; and the case to made for the USP 40 (Equipping the ITA12L as a primary and the USP40 as the secondary to pull out in long-range, shotgun incompatible gunfights), is defeated by the fact that it gets weak really fast around and past medium range; and it has very poor 12+1 mag size with only 4 additional mags in reserve (poor for attempting to run it as your only fighting tool other than a shotgun; it’s not like Kapkan or Tachanka who have the PMM on their side; or Pulse, who has access to two very good FBI handguns).

In short, that’s all there is. Neither the shotgun or the handgun are good enough to be considered a real viable alternative to Vector+Pocket Shotgun; especially because a Shotgun+Handgun loadout does not help you at all use your mirrors to their fullest.

Alright now we get to the cool stuff, the technology. Basically I’m going into the little technical tips you can use with mirror placements. The halfway mirror, that sort of thing. If you’re a familiar reader from the Kapkan guide; you probably agree with me that the little tech tips are the best part of the guides; and I hope these Mirror Tech tricks live up to the expectations:

Unfortunately I had to split this section into three parts for the Steam version of this guide because sections have a character limit I'm afraid:

The trick I’m about to teach you may be a little confusing for some people, especially beginners, to its actual use on matches, but if you look into Section 6 in this guide you’ll see clearly what is the potential power this placement has. For players that already know how powerful a peeking mirror can be, you’ll notice immediately how broken this “Halfway Mirror” can be on a few specific scenarios.


I’m using this wall on Coastline Kitchen not because it’s a good place to do a halfway mirror, but because it’s a well lit wall to serve as an example. I’ll go over some actual suggested spots for them later on the section,



It’s called a halfway mirror because it’s halfway into a reinforcement and halfway into a soft wall; allowing you to take cover and peek through murder holes with a single window: Now, you can place a halfway mirror on the right or left sides of a reinforcement, and at crouch and standing height. I’ll show you the crouching one in a more detailed way because that’s the one you’ll be using the most in matches.


To place them, you need to find this exact 1 pixel spot.


There exactly.


A way to find that particular spot is to pull out the mirror (which hides your crosshair); and if you’re on the right on, the little circle will appear for mirror placement, and the light will turn green. This works with both standard and advanced gadget deployment.





Look at the compression I had to do so Steam let me put this up jeez.
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This is what it looks like from inside and outside.



Stand-up style murder hole.

Halfway mirrors are useful not only because they provide you both cover and aggressive possibilities, but because it makes the window indestructible (unlike mirrors placed entirely on soft walls that can be destroyed if the wall is destroyed, with like an Ash breaching shot for example).

As I said, you can also place halfway mirrors at standing height; the position to place it is this:



Similar to the crouching height but instead of using the red lower bar as reference, you’re using the line right under the red top bar as reference; and the very edge of the reinforcement as well.


You can place two halfway mirrors on just 1 reinforcement (they can be at the same height too, I placed them like these just to show both heights side by side).


You can also still (for some reason) reinforce the soft wall even though the mirror is in the way.
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An example I think is very powerful to showcase the potential of halfway mirrors; this is a way to make Clubhouse’s Cash Room a little more playable. This goes for all of you casual-matchmaking players who have the disgrace of defeding Cash Room:


You basically play the whole thing from the stairs (arguably the safest place in the whole floor). A decent way to defend cash is pre-placed Nitros from the floor below as well; both A and B sites have soft floors; however stairs does not and there’s only one angle for people to shoot your windows open (which I blocked with a deployable shield; this can be your friend’s shield though; make them play Doc or something).

This is a pretty basic and well known little trick for mirrors placed on reinforced walls. It consists of getting rid of soft wall bits from the edges of the placed window (from the soft wall side); so you can have a clearer vision through the glass. This is normally done to clear the sides of the mirror to gain increased FOV, but you can also do it to the top part of the mirror to gain some extra view upwards when you place a mirror at crouch-height.

It’s a very easy process:


You place the mirror on a reinforced wall.


You go around.


And you shoot out all the edge bits with your pocket shotty.


Sides off. (The usual)


All sides off. (Ideal).
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My way for doing this is a bit faster; consists of making the hole for the mirror bit before reinforcing; then reinforcing up and placing the mirror. This is a tad more efficient because it allows for the technique to be performed without going back and forth to the outside of the reinforcement; it’s ideal for wide walls that don’t have a nearby door to go around and shot out the edges; and also for walls that lead outside and you can’t go and do this at all during prep-phase.
It looks like this:


Instead of reinforcing first and placing the mirror; you first wanna make the hole.


Then reinforce & place the mirror:




Then you’re done, you got the same effect without having to walk around.

The one big downside to this is that depending on how hard the wall is (double ply; stubborn wooden studs, etc.) can be a little bit slower and take more ammo than just going around and giving it a shot to each side. So, consider what option is best for each case would be the wise thing to do:


For example this wall can be ammo (and time) consuming if you’re going for the hole first approach. Most garage doors are single ply and fairly weak too so you can get the full hole in 1 reload most of the time.
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In Border armory you can’t shoot out the sides because you can’t go outside during prep-phase; and you won’t really run out to do that once the round begins (not worth it at all really). I wanna add that this particular placement is very, very greedy and you should stick to the more conservative Armory Desk hole instead if you're playing in higher-ish rank levels.
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For Border Office, you really don’t have to take the time to shoot out the whole hole out to reinforce afterwards, as going around is super easy duh.

Composite Setups is named after a section that I had no idea what to call. This is basically for mirror setups (usually either active or in-site mirrors) that have pre-placed Nitro Cells, Double Windows, that sorta thing.

Pre-placed Nitro Cells for some specific holds with mirrors are used even in the Pro League to great effect; as they add the element of blindsiding attackers staring down closed windows and murder holes by a pre-placed Nitro either through a wall or through the floor. I recall actually one being used in game 3 of the Invitational Grand Finals (EG vs Penta) on Kafe, on red stairs through mining room, being held by a mirror from Mira inside train’s right hand side of the door.

This is basically what the setup was: (I wanna explain this as a sorta “real world” example; and then I’ll give another one to give you some ideas).


From here you can watch people coming down from red; and of course, people coming in from the windows of pastry roof:


The idea is the Nitro is pre-placed here, for people coming in from the second pastry window, or up from red stairs, that are behind this piece of cover. The reason you keep this wall and not shoot it out is because you want to avoid lines of sight from pastry roof to the mirror; and encourage them to vault in.


Attackers come in like this; see the mirror, and you, instead of peeking out, just instantly nitro. Any reactions they may have (prefiring the mirror, vaulting back out, proning, taking cover to the right) are all in-range of the nitrocell. Plus, because the wall is all blown out, you can clearly hear people break the window barricade, and if the match is silent, even hear them vaulting in to red.


You can also pre-place the nitro here; but it takes way longer and can be found by an attacker earlier on the round (and you have no way to tell your nitro cell was destroyed once placed)


Doing it from under though leaves the wall between red and mining intact.
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This next one is funny because it’s designed to deny after you’ve already forfeited the original position. It’s a bit of a gamble but it’s basically impossible to counter, since it comes from below it does 100% damage to shields too. The general idea is that having some foresight and knowing just a couple of these placements per map allows you to be super patient with your anchoring; as you can just back off before things get too hot and just hold your second angle without sticking your head out too much. Just don't go trying this every round, this is more the sorta thing you’d clip if you were streaming; having your Nitro Cell on you is very valuable too.


This is the Desk hold I talked about in last section.



After losing the mirror position you got this plan-b denying nitro all set.


Takes out default plant on A from below. If you play with some higher skill players normally a Pulse or Valkyrie will be trying this and you can keep your Nitro for tossing it through nitro holes and such.
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Let’s look at double mirrors now. Generally I tell people that double mirrors suck, and it’s not really because they do, but because I see them overused when not necessary. The initial idea for a double mirror starts with the right idea of having a way to shoot people behind the glass, but instead of leaving the wall next to the window soft and opening a murder hole there, you reinforce the whole thing up, place mirrors next to one another and open one of them.

There’s some issues with this; first of all, using both windows to cover 1 area will mean you won’t have the second mirror to place somewhere else; for someone else to use, or for you to fall back to when you forfeit the original position. The second problem with some of the placements for double mirrors is that they leave a hole in a reinforcement leading right into the site, which I don’t need to explain how troublesome that can be.

So, the few double mirror placements that are actually quite good have at least two features in common, that are having a closed background (so, you’re not exposing any important room from the open mirror), and also, having an enclosed space that prevents you from anchoring from moving from one angle to the other, more or less encouraging you to “put all your eggs in a single basket”, using both mirrors to cover one area. This is specially relevant when you’re not playing with a particularly coordinated team that uses your mirrors as often as you do.

The best way to actually use a double mirror is to generate a piece of cover in the center and have the possibility of peeking from both sides of the cover; so, you use a natural hole like a doorway and then make the other hole with an open mirror.




The reason you must open this window instead of the other one is because, as I keep saying, you have to try to be able to peek from both sides, or at least have the possibility, to avoid getting prefired.

With this setup you can do this:



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This "peeking from both sides" can also be found "naturally", it's just not as common; for example here in Geisha Room:




Any time you've got the option to have a mirror like this you should definitely go for it; they are generally pretty strong and hard to deal with as an attacker if you don't have like a Frag grenade.

If you’ve played Mira at least once you probably understand the power of being able to track the enemy’s head through the glass, then peeking out and getting an instant, pre-fire like headshot. There’s 3 main ways to do this effectively:

The first way is the standard “crouch & stand up” method; you place your mirror at crouch height on a soft wall, then watch people through the glass, and then quickly stand up and shoot through the soft wall on top of the mirror, like so:


For all intents and purposes I’m going to recommend you shotgun out holes for any sort of technique in which you pre-aim through the mirror and then shoot through walls; because you don’t actually want to be “shooting through walls” and losing bullet damage because of the surface, especially considering how low the Vector’s damage drops with distance. Also removing the superior part makes the mirror view clearer:


So make sure your setup looks like the picture above, and not like the one below:


Having mirrors not shotgunned does have a place and time, namely in scenarios where you want people to not see the mirror when the enter the room (like using a piece of furniture in front of it to block the view; and then you’re able to shoot them through the soft wall); but, against more skilled players (who’ll drone you) you might as well just open up the wall as I said.

The main downside of this method is that you can easily be prefire-wallbanged by people shooting under the mirror when they see it; it won’t get your head but still. An Ash can shoot a breach at you and take out the whole mirror with it, etc. You can prevent this by using a halfway mirror (see previous section), but sometimes that blocks some of the view as you’re moving it to one side or the other.

Another downside is that sometimes there are objects, like furniture, that will block your lines of sight when looking through a crouch height mirror.
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The second method is is all about going sideways, again, you’ve seen this a thousand times: This is the strafing mirror. You can do these in soft walls too, but generally I recommend using a reinforced placement and put the mirror all the way to the very edge (I’ll explain why in detail in a second here):


Again, I suggest you open up those sides/side. I know that you think some Buck player over there is gonna chuck a perfectly cooked grenade at you through the hole, but you’re gonna have to run that risk so that your Vector bullets actually hurt people (and also so you can accurately track people not just sort of predict or hope they haven’t moved much. Opening holes next to the mirror also makes it so your teammates in casual understand that mirror is for killing folks on the other side not to watch and wait.

The advantage of the strafe mirror compared to the crouch mirror is that you can place this one on a reinforced wall (without using a halfway mirror); and use it as cover. And even crouch under it in the off chance it gets shot open (or maybe you shot it open to bait, more on this on a second). One recommendation I do have for this sort of placement is making sure the mirror is placed as close as possible to the edge of the reinforcement, to reduce the obstruction of the mirror frame for the user, especially because the actual hole helps increasing that side’s mirror FOV. Also, as you already know, placing the mirror “punches” the reinforcement out; and the reinforcement is not a flat rectangle-block, but it has a bit of a U shape:


It actually takes that bit out as well clearing that line for you to shoot. Compare these two strafe-type mirrors; one of them being centered and the other being on the edge of the metal wall:










As you can see taking this bit out ends up being potentially a big deal because of how little you have to move away from the reinforces to hold angles, and the angles you can hold through the mirror become super tight with the peeking; so much in fact you can peek with just leaning ala shooty bowling guy.
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The third method is the most lethal but it’s also the one that exposes you the most. This one requires the mirror to be placed next to a doorway or an exposed area. You place the mirror on a reinforced surface, with no murder holes, nothing; and when an enemy is seen through the glass, you actually peek out with your whole body and take them out. This is the most “♥♥♥♥♥ out” approach and it’s generally the best in terms of killing people really fast. Plus it serves as a quick way to rotate between rooms. More about it in section 7 (Landscaping).

Well, and one last thing I want you to remember about the mirrors and peeking about them is to be super aggressive and reckless with them (Reckless not as “yeah you should peek that ACOG using guy three times in a row after they’ve noticed you’re trying to prefire with your mirror”). Just don’t overthink your moves when you’re using a mirror, as if you didn’t have it and you were just peeking normally; you have 100% of the advantage and you gotta be really fast so that enemies can’t react to the situation. Being afraid of drawing fire will make you miss kills and the same people you saw walk past you at the start of the round are going to come around and bite your 3 armor ass when the clock is counting down the last minute.

Also, think about what you do as an attacker when you come across a mirror. You either stick around and try to push whoever is manning the mirror out (that is, if you’ve got an operator that CAN do that, or if your team is with you and also trying the same thing); or you leave and attack from a different direction; and probably never come back in front of the mirror again (super common practice among uncoordinated teams in casual, people just see a mirror and they go around and never come back). So, in many cases, you only get that first chance to kill somebody when they come in front of the mirror; as long as you’re there watching and not somewhere else or on the other mirror, you should always try to take the shot.

Now listen up; cause this section will be useful to learn to counter Mira not just to play her.

50% of playing a decent Mira is your mirror placement, obviously, so: What's the first step at being good? It’s simple, just don’t be bad. Following this logic, let’s get into what makes a placement bad, and go from there.

Mirrors have three basic qualities: Aggro, Duration, and Weakness.

is how aggressive you can get with the information it provides; how likely is it that you’ll kill somebody peeking from the mirror (or using the one-side-window element as an advantage).

is all about how much can you keep up the hold before having for forfeit your position.

is just how easy or difficult it is for enemies to shoot your window open.
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You can have a weak mirror with low duration but if it’s high in aggro you can make it work during the first half of the round; a more greedy alternative.

You can also have a mirror that’s not so aggressive but will still be useful during the last minute (not that common because positions are so broken up).

Let’s look at a mirror that fails at these concepts:


This window is total garbage. Let’s break down why:

Number 1: Aggro. This mirror has no way of turning it’s intel into kill potential. You can basically just watch people move around inside circle couch but then do nothing about it. The only way you may actually do anything with this mirror is opening it; and that shouldn’t even count, because that pretty much just defeats the purpose of the black mirror being a 1 way thing.

Number 2: Duration. It may take people going in-site to force you forfeit that window; unless the window is opened or the wall breached of course. The main problem with it is that there is no way for you to fall back on an angle to defend your original position. How is your team supposed to defend inside from penthouse if your mirror does not help protect the penthouse room at all, or, if it was opened by enemies, how is your team supposed to BE inside penthouse without getting shot from VIP room through your mirror?

Number 3: Weakness. Your mirror can be easily, EASILY shot open by a rappelling enemy on penthouse’s big window, or by an Ash, Zofia, Buck, opening the floor under you; it’s not a safe placement by any means; not only for the mirror but for whoever is manning it.

In short, it’s not a good idea to put a mirror there. It’s at best, useless; at worst, detrimental to your team.
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Unrelated but very important: in uncoordinated team environments like solo queuing or casual matchmaking; where you’re relying on your own 2 reinforcements; when you really need more than just these 2; the rule of thumb is to 1) Place them apart; and 2) Start from the middle, not the edges. This is also how Proleague teams reinforce walls when they gotta cover more than the 10 possible walls; they do one reinforced, one soft, so they got cover but can also peek from both sides of a single reinforcement.



Being able to peek a piece of cover from both sides is far, far stronger than just being able to peek one of the sides, as having options makes it way less likely you get prefired. When possible, you should try to make your windows act like this as well. I went into this in section 4.C when talking about double mirrors. Being able to do this:



Is far better than just this:

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Finally, you must think about the mirrors as one “main” mirror, that you’re going to be covering/manning the most, and a second mirror which can be: A fallback for forfeiting your first mirror, a cover for a totally different route for attack (especially in Bomb, where you’re defending two different rooms) which is usually either manned by someone else or by you if you decide to completely change position, or, it can be used along the main mirror, to cover a separate area (not a double mirror).


The third option of having both mirrors in the same place but covering different areas isn’t possible everywhere, but when it is, I strongly suggest you try to go for that, because it just allows you to use both of your mirrors to their maximum potential, as you’re right on them manning them both at once. The example I use to explain this is on Skyscraper’s Geisha Room:


The red X is your position in this case.




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Another example is this two-mirror setup for Bank Open Area. Here’s the whole setup in detail (This was pulled by Ronin vs EG during Season 7 of Proleague):



The most important bit about this window in particular is that it allows you to see the hatch in the middle of staff room.


By making a wide head-height hole between admin and archive, and between archive and tellers, you get to see all the way to the door from main lobby.


Now, for Mira herself (no acog and her recoil) it’s kinda hard and rare to get a kill from all the way back there. However, it is basically forcing attackers to go around, try to attack from above, go skylight stairs, etc; it’s a single mirror converting 3 rooms into relative danger zones for the attackers.

I’ve talked a lot about landscaping throughout the guide; and really it is because landscaping, for certain operators, like Mira, Smoke, and maybe shotgun Echo too; sets apart anchor players in terms of how hard they can hold and how creative they are at modifying the room to their advantage.

With Mira it is especially strong as Mirrors come into play; you’re turning the map upside down after you’re done setting up basically. It is very important to know how to properly landscape your environment.

Anyway, after all, landscaping is about making a bunch of holes. Different holes have very different uses. We’re going to be looking at and naming a bunch of them for the sake of guide-dom; and you’ll be familiar with them in no time:

The first one, and probably one of the strongest if not the strongest of them all: The Strafe-Hole. This name is garbage but I dunno, it hasn’t been named anything so for guide’s sake there you go.

The Strafe-Hole is a big, tall hole, usually the size of a door, sometimes slimmer, that goes right next of a perpendicular wall adjacent to a mirror.

As you saw in section 5, the strongest way for you to kill people behind the glass is to strafe them into your sights using a door next to the mirror (like the example of Border Armory). Well, the Strafe-Hole is designed to use a doorway that is not next to your mirror, but to create a hole that connects the mirror to the doorway, so that you can strafe and kill people behind the mirror.


As I said earlier in the guide it not only allows you to peek sideways really fast by strafing in and out from behind the reinforcement, but it allows you to rotate between rooms and go for otherwise out of reach angles such as people behind the gym area here:



You can even combine a big strafe hole with smaller head height holes into the room; so you are not as much peeking out with your whole body (as I said in section 5) but just using the big hole to have a better behind-the-mirror area:


So you can improve this (which is really bad cause people will shoot you and your mirror open from skylight). To this...


that can’t be cut from skylight; keeps both walls to behind bar reinforced; and also has a better angle of this little part of piano which a lot of people connect from hatch (Hibana players, etc):





When doing these you wanna make sure you shotgun lower part of the wall completely, so you can strafe freely through it and not having any issue with your foot getting stuck in a bits of unbroken debris.



This technique of peeking out with your whole body is also very strong as you’re keeping all walls reinforced and intact, and peeking out from an intended doorway or whatever it may be. Because of this people can’t really prefire you out as they would with a strafe mirror, or wallbang you like they’d do with a crouching mirror.

If you have access to a 90 degree wall and making a rotation hole connecting the rooms won’t come to bite you later in the round, I highly recommend going for this sort of setup instead of a soft wall crouch window, etc.
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Nitro Holes are regular practice on higher levels of play, particularly on sites like Bank basement. They are basically a shotgun hole way above head-height and they are made in order to throw nitro cells through to the other side utilizing the curve of the toss.

They are, as I said, common practice usually in sites that generally really need and use black mirrors in the defender’s landscaping plan; and that have wide soft walls leading into the whole site; and also, that have “blind spots”, as in, an indestructible object that an attacker could use as cover behind the mirror. Again using Bank basement as an example, that would be the desk over to the left side area of the site adjacent to servers.

Nitro cells also work best in enclosed; slow pushed rooms so check out if your defended site checks these points it could be a good idea to leave a wall soft and make a nitro hole instead of reinforcing it.

Here’s a popular one because of the massive blind spot the bed there creates:


A small modification sometimes made to nitro holes (in the proleague for example we see it a lot) is to make them double height so your Smoke can throw gas canisters down the same way as you’d do a nitro cell; but allowing them to go lower as canisters fly way straight compared to a nitro cell. Another popular one (with double height):



For your Nitro cell needs, you can throw just like that; but your Smoke partner can also walk back a bit and get the angle with the lower half of the hole:


Like so.

Also, if you are making a Nitro hole by your mirror, make sure the reinforcement is not going to be in the way whenever you want to throw the Nitro; meaning, if there’s like a door or entrance you think you might have to throw a Nitro at later, reinforce the wall and place your mirror in a way that you don’t have to walk much to get the right angle for the toss.
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For our third bit of landscaping we got these bad boys:


Wide holes at varying heights are a common way of landscaping even without a Mira in the picture; if you’re a Smoke player and you know how to anchor and lurk using landscaping to your advantage, with the thinking man’s loadout (Shotgun - Smg11 - Barbed Wire), then you know how versatile these can be. Though you probably place them at ankle height most of the time.

Now, these wide holes on soft walls are not strictly a Mira thing, for that reason I’ll only explain a portion of the logic behind making a X-height hole, blah, blah, blah. Otherwise I’m going to be waist deep in irrelevant-to-the-guide paragraphs on landscaping by the next 2 pages.

Most commonly, you’re going to make these very wide holes at head height. This is for many reasons, first of all; sideways-strafing mirrors are best at head height, because just standing up you strafe faster than crouching; crouching mirrors generally use the crouch-stand up method to shoot people behind the glass, not sideways strafing. In summary, they increase the number of possible angles. People usually walk into rooms standing up (because it's faster), and also, because it creates permantent lines of sight that keep attackers on their toes

Ok so, this is what we’d call a Friends & Foes section; though I’ll be a little more nuanced in what I call a straight up counter, and what I call a more of a sideline problematic enemy or gadget; because they certainly do not require the same level of attention.



Twitch is the only operator in the game who can remotely open one of your Black Mirrors, thanks to her Shock drone. All she has to do is shoot the canister and you’re done. The usual way to prevent this from happening is to put your body as a human shield between you and the shock drone but sometimes you’re just not around the mirror. Even Mute’s Signal disruptors aren’t perfect at dealing with a Shock drone, as Twitch can take them out quite easily as long as there’s a clear angle from a far enough distance.

If you’re playing with a coordinated team, notify everyone anchoring to keep an eye for Shock Drones; to call out whenever there’s one around, whenever one or both of them are destroyed, and to call out whenever Twitch is killed.

During Prep-phase, if you see a shock drone and it manages to escape you; take your time to do all landscaping and reinforcing first, and then go for Black Mirror placements after it has been confirmed destroyed (and before the action phase starts, when you know you’re going to be around the mirror to defend it).

Hibana is a tricky one when you’re dealing with mirrors facing the exterior such as in Border Armory. As long as the walls aren’t shock wired or jammed; hard breachers on your setup are tricky to deal with; and Hibana not only can open a hole that renders your placement useless, but she can do multiple holes simultaneously; and set the charges from a range; unlike Thermite (if someone was attempting to exothermic your Armory wall you’ll just run out the door and turn them into human guac so). Hibana can also just shoot the pellets AT your mirror, partially blocking the view; this is not that big of a deal as getting your wall breached, but still, she’s the only operator that can do that sort of thing. Hibana also has flashbangs (see Ash).

Ash is able to delete mirrors being placed on soft walls by shooting a breaching charge at the wall. If you’re placing from an in-site mirror, ADSs will prevent this, but it is usual practice to chuck a couple flashbangs in-site to take out ADSs as Ash so it may not be as reliable as you think. Flashbangs themselves, are a bit problematic as Mira because they will affect you fully even through the black mirror. This means generally that you’ll have to turn around or step back a bit to break line of sight with the stun grenade; and if you happen to have nitro holes or wide holes in your setup, people could be throwing flashes in front of the mirror and then attempting to throw them through these holes.

Even more directly problematic than flashbangs are all frag grenades. I quickly mentioned this in one of the first sections of the guide, but basically the fact that Mira does not move about a lot due to her role as an Anchor and the fact that generally she sticks around mirrors; makes her positions very cooked-frag-friendly. Watch out for Sledge, Buck, and IQ (to a lesser extent; she has no breaching so no need to worry about the vertical play aspect).

Another reason you should watch out for Sledge, Buck, and Ash, is because they are very proficient soft-wall breachers and, on certain placements, this means they will be able to shoot your mirror open from a floor above you; and for Buck, Ash, and adding Zofia too, they will be able to do it from below which is awfully problematic.


This common placement on border…


Boom, some Ash or Zofia just ruined your day.

Zofia can also kill your soft-wall mirrors just like Ash, by shooting an impact at it in her case.

Once a mirror has been opened, Glaz & Blackbeard can be hard to deal with as they will set up an angle using the reinforced hole and generally turn the tables in that they can’t be easily peeked out of that position. Smoking in front and around mirrors is also a good way to deal with an aggressive peeky-Mira, so Glaz and also Ying (with her flash capabilities) are at least somewhat decent at temporarily disabling a Black mirror angle. Same goes for Capitao, but he can apply the smoke from far away; and also, he can force you out of a mirror position by shooting a fire bolt at the side of the walls (generally common for mirror placements that use murder holes on their sides; it’s quite easy to shoot a bolt at the exact edge of the wall and cause the fire to land right behind the window area).
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Now let’s see at some synergies possible in the defending team. Now, Mira in all honesty is fairly independent, as is the case with most operators; so there’s not a lot of straight up “cool combos” to do as her plus X operator. Siege in general is not a very combo-centric game (which in my opinion is a good thing in general, keeps things fluid). Anyway, these are just little things that aid you in your role.

Bandit, is going to land first in this section because Mira benefits from him just as much as he benefits from having a Mira window. You help make Bandit tricking way easier; and he shocks walls preventing Hibanas from blowing holes in your wall or blocking your mirror’s vision.

Right after Bandit, we got Mute. Now, Mute of course helps to stop hard breachers but 1) he can’t Bandit trick, so he’s way less effective at that, and 2) Hibana can still block your mirror’s vision with jammed pellets. Mute’s best feature when placing Signal jammers by your mirrored walls is the fact that it will conceal the person manning the mirror (using it to peek, etc), from drones, and more specifically important, Lion’s ee-one-d scans. Within the jamming distance, you got yourself a decent strafing sorta range, for you to peek out doors and go back to your mirror without getting spotted by Lion’s drone. So even during red-light rushes, you can brrrrt at people trying to enter by your mirrors. Also, well placed Jammers protect your mirrors against shock drones.

Here by popular demand; this is the summary section, where I try and collapse the whole guide into the most important bits; for the more casual readers. I decided to format it as a list, actually; so it’s as light and scan-able as possible:

• Mira is a 3 armor anchor defender that excels at one-sided pre-peeking due to her Black Mirror gadget.
  
  
• Her standard-accepted loadout consists of the Vector .45 ACP as the primary weapon (Equipped with a sight of your preference, a compensator, and a vertical grip), the ITA12S as the secondary weapon (Equipped with a laser pointer underbarrel; with the sight being mostly optional); and a Nitro Cell as her equipment.
  
  
• Unless you are placing your window facing the exterior in order to help a Bandit prevent hard breaches; you should always try and place your Black Mirrors so there’s some way for you to shoot the people you see behind the glass. Otherwise you’re more or less wasting it’s potential.
  
  
• This can be by placing the mirror to the edge of a reinforced wall, and shooting through a hole or door next to it; by placing it at crouch height on a soft wall to be able to stand up and fire from there; or by using a halfway mirror (which has a bit of both).
  
  
• A big part of playing Mira is using her secondary shotgun to landscape the map: Making rotation holes, especially stand-up height rotation holes, will allow you to use your black mirrors aggressively more easily by strafing in and out of cover.
  
  
• You can also use your pocket shotgun to take out any remaining piece of wall from the sides in front of the mirrors, increasing your window’s field of view.
  
  
• If you’re playing from a soft wall, you can make a hole up above head height, so you can toss your Nitro cell through it and get enemies behind cover/blind spots.
  
  
• When placing a mirror, it’s important to think about any possible lines of sight that could lead to or open to the back of it, to avoid getting your black mirror shot open by an enemy. Remember to also keep an eye on whatever is above and below your mirror; soft floors and ceilings, especially at higher skill levels, will be a common way for people to force you out of your mirror position.
  
  
• On top of that, remember to think about what you’ll do when you are forced to forfeit that original position; your job as an anchor is defending the site until the very end of the round, and if you’re unable to do so then you’ve possibly set up either mirrors wrong, or reinforced the wrong things in-site.

Hey look, that’s it. Thanks for sticking around for the guide and I hope it’s helpful to at least one aspiring Mira player; or at least I hope it makes the operator more interesting for those who hate the defense side because they think it is boring when compared to attacking (I know there’s a lot of you).

If you like it show it to your siege friends, your aunt, anyone you want; I’d appreciate it a lot o/

For those unfamiliar; I make a guide per month; you can subscribe to my Steam author page to get them as soon as they are released if you want, Patreon and Twitter do the trick aswell.
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https://www.patreon.com/siegeguides
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