Guild Wars 2

I don’t speak for every person in my profession, but the feel that I’ve gotten from the mesmer community is that this new Mimic is lackluster and unsatisfactory. There are a few reasons for this, but I’ll name the top three:
1. Arcane Thievery: We already have a skill on a shorter cool down which can do something similar with more purposes. Sure, it won’t give us “all” the boons, but it is less situational and has the dual purpose of being a condition cleanser.
2. Ranger Changes: Just as rangers gain a very powerful buff to their [super] long-range projectile attacks, mesmers lose a skill which would essentially become a super strong counter to such focus-fire attacks like Rapid Fire. I assume that this was on purpose, but it feels like mesmers were made to take a nerf for the sake of ranger’s buff, which seems a bit like poisoning grapes to make the newest apple seem juicier.
3. Singular Purpose: It has such a straight-forward effect, it has no duality which the mesmer is based upon. Almost every skill a mesmer has can be used in more than one way. For instance, OH Sword’s #4 can be a high-damage block or a projectile daze. This is minor.

There are other reasons, among these. The point is, it seems most of us would like the old Mimic back or at least an alternative change to this one, or even perhaps a tweak to the current one which makes it more appealing as a whole[remember, duality].

Any thoughts or suggestions on this?

Mimic would be worthwhile IMO if it would steal all the boons of the targeted player and apply it to yourself. If they put it on a 35 second CD instead I wouldn’t mind. But I guess the name mimic wouldn’t apply to it anymore.

Or just revert it back.

I feel like it’s a little out of place.

“haha I now have the same boons as you! You poor fool!”

“..okay..”

There’s no real benefit to having the skill that would make you choose it over something else, unless you were running a gimmick boonshare build that would be as useful as a mesmer playing a gimmick boonshare build.

I would like it if you could use it on friendly targets too. You could stack some serious boons with some coordination and signet of inspiration

The old Mimic wasn’t very good, but this new one is even worse. There is almost no reason to take it over Arcane Thievery.

Can’t really imagine how anet thought this new skill could be any good. It may sound “ok” on paper. In reality, Mesmers usually can’t afford swapping useful utilites for this one-trick-pony skill. Team utility, condi cleanse, survivability, combo fields. Mimic is inferior in all aspects compared to so many other skills. Sure, you may be able to copy all those elementalist boons and even share it with your team (Signet of Inspiration), but that may occur once every match – outside of that, you pretty much wasted two utility slots.

For PvE? Most boss mobs don’t have any interesting boons to copy.
New Mimic is crap, and the overhaul should get… overhauled. Or at least reverted.

Here’s my suggestion:
Reintroduce Echo. New Echo shares boons with all your allies (basically the same functionality as Signet of Inspiration). The combination of copying boons + sharing them is nice, it’s just not worth slotting two utility skills for it in most situations.

Signet of Inspiration should become the speed Signet Mesmers were asking for since forever.

Pretty, please?

This is probably OP, but I think a cool version of mimic could be one which first requires us to use a very small AoE targeting field[180 radius, maybe] capture the target in it. The skill then switches to kitteno, which we can use to forcibly teleport enemies back to their position inside the mimic. This can, of course, be dodged so there is counter play, and does not interrupt skills they’re using.

I don’t know why, but the appeal of “resetting time-space” really hits me as very mesmer and cool.

It was a very pointless change to Mimic. At no point in the game have I ever really come up against a target with ALL boons, other than when a Thief uses Consume Plasma. So Arcane Thievery already had us covered on that front, whilst also being a steal and a condition transfer.

At least turn Mimic into a duration effect. If a target is marked with Mimic, then for 10 seconds any boons they acquire are also copied to the Mesmer that marked them. Counter-play: party should avoid giving boons to a marked target or, err, kill the Mesmer.

I can see two versions of this which would make more sense. The “smaller” one changes this:

• Used on an enemy, it stores all boons on them. Echo is then enabled during the skills’ CD, allowing you to apply those boons to a targeted friendly target, cannot be self as a result of that.
• Used on a friendly target, it stores all conditions on them (again, does not actually remove them!). Then Echo can copy those onto an enemy target. Again, due to being unable to target yourself you cannot pull conditions from yourself, this’d be a group support skill (compare Arcane Thievery for self-use).

The bigger change would be a much more complete “Mimic”. For 10 seconds:

• You look like the target.
• You actually copy their weapons. That is to say, if I can use their current weapon, for 10s I switch to that weapon, just with Mesmer skills ofc. So if I run Sword/Sword Sword/Focus, and I copy a Warrior wielding a GS, I get my GS skills.
• Boon status.
• Condition status.
• Other effects such as food / sharpening stone / etc.
• Team allegiance. I can still be hurt by enemy attacks and they see the numbers, and friendly targets can still heal me. But to enemies, I seem to be on their team.

I wouldn’t mind the Copies for X amount of time, but to really make it a keystone to make up for some holes in the Mesmer class it would need to be doing a bit more than boons.

Same CD

Duration 10s or 15s or whatever..

You copy all boons and their durations, all auras and their durations, all Stances and their durations, all effects (stealth included) and their durations on target foe.

That Stealth spam thief suddenly finds that It and the Mesmer both keep popping in and out of Stealth at the same times, it cant land a blow on what it cant find.

That Warrior who got into trouble and burns Endure Pain or whatever to try and put pressure back on the Mesmer? Whelp, now its a stale mate till it wears off.

Ele spamming auras to stack might while trying to avoid getting hit with conditions and apply them through said auras? now its an even playing field and each hit from either side is at much higher stakes.

Now its a game changing utility in more than a Single and very rare situation, hell it might even make some impact on the meta.

“Mesmers so OP, they can mimic the OP aspects of my class, pls nerf”

I would avoid copying weapons and skills used etc.. that ends up being a lot of coding for Anet (they barley have enough resources to fix bugs remember?) and a lot of memorizing to do for any Mesmer that brings the skill to any game mode.

This rendition of it would be extremely underwhelming in PvE still, but even the original Mimic only had a few niche uses in Soloing dungeon paths…

Edit: Afterthought, I just imagined mimicking a Necros Death Shroud, omg the lulz that would be had..

Oh that’s interesting, if it were a lingering effect. I would be ok with it also copying Conditions if that meant the CD became shorter, but the idea seems quite interesting.

Because as you say, someone blocking or going invul or stealth to gain an advantage will just play a waiting game since at the exact time they stealth, we stealth.

You forgot:

4. Awesome animation and visual effect of bubble shield.