Guild Wars 2

Lore and Introduction

Out of the various experiments done by asuran scientists, the college of synergistic’s biology labs discovered a peculiar ability found in some individuals that, when under great stress, they may alter their body makeup. Initially this is uncontrollable, especially in childhood, but with care and development these individuals, known as ‘Mimics’ or derogatively as “Skinshifters”, become able to use their passive abilities to their advantage. After much experimentation, the college learnt how to unlock this ability in all individuals, hence giving us transform potions.

But these potions are temporary, and the Mimic can warp their bodies permanently to suit their needs. That being said, transformations take a lot of energy, and the Mimic must temper their new abilities against their ability to transform.

Background
Behold! A transform class! I’ve been puzzling out how to make one of these for a while and I think I’ve cracked it. Issues that plagued me were: what exactly could I cause transforms into? We have animal transforms, so that isn’t unique. I can’t transform people into dragons in this game, that’s way against lore. In fact, we have an entire race that is dedicated to transforms. So my job was to work out a mechanic that didn’t tread on any toes lore-wise, kept the norn unique, and come up with a plausible mechanic for transformations. Below is my solution. Let me know what you think!

Profession Mechanic
Mimicry
The mimicry mechanic uses Energy, the Mimic’s resource. Energy begins with a full bar and reduces whilst in combat. Out of combat it recharges, or when the Mimic dodge-rolls. This is used to activate the Mimic’s transform effects’ skills, on buttons f1-f3.

The f1-f3 buttons are skills based on your three equippble transforms, which you may equip in a separate window. None are mutually exclusive, and can all be used at once. They unlock with level progression, at 1, 4 and 7.

F1 represents your Head.
F2 represents your Torso.
F3 represents your Legs.

Transforms
Transforms are, for programming ease, tied to Ranger pet friendlies.

…wait, what?

You heard me correctly. Your toon will mimic the characteristics of ranger pets it meets in the world.

For example, if you happen to meet an Owl, you may study it to be able to mimic its beak, wings and talons. Owl wings, unlike eagle wings, will provide different effects when you mimic them, and the beak and talons will each provide separate effects.

Similarly, drakes will provide you each with a different mimic, fire, ice, reef each providing you with a different effect. Fire Drake’s head might give you burning damage, whilst Drake torso will give you extra toughness and drake legs might grant you some stability.

You can also mix it up. Have a Drake’s head, Spider’s body and Lynx’s feet?
Mix burning damage with poison immunity with swiftness? sounds like fun!

Profession Armor
This is an adventurer class. The Mimics are thus garbed in medium armor.

Weapons
Since these guys have a ton of versatility, their weapon choices aren’t that broad.
Two-hand:
Longbow
Shortbow
Main-Hand:
Axe
Sword
Dagger
Pistol
Off-hand:
Axe
Sword
Dagger
Pistol

Reserved for skills etc.

Reserved for more stuff

FAQ’s etc just in case

Looks interesting i must say, would deffo be trying this out if it got implemented

Another awesome idea Redrex, though not as original as your others. Definitely worth considering though.
You have also given it some ‘graspable status’: it isn’t just some loose mechanism without any physical grounds for it, but founded in mimicry. I like the idea for using the several juvenile animals we already have in this world and make it able to get one aspect of these animals.

I doubt you would have much advantage from those transforms though:
Consider the case of the owl you used. You say we can use 3 aspects, can we you all 3 at the same time or only 1 of the three at the same time?

- Head: beak… solely useful for melee? What about adding visual effects too: watch through the eyes of an owl?
- Torso: wings… overpowered?
- Legs: talons… not much use if you can’t use them combined with wings.

More input please

Sirendor.1394:

I doubt you would have much advantage from those transforms though:
Consider the case of the owl you used. You say we can use 3 aspects, can we you all 3 at the same time or only 1 of the three at the same time?

- Head: beak… solely useful for melee? What about adding visual effects too: watch through the eyes of an owl?
- Torso: wings… overpowered?
- Legs: talons… not much use if you can’t use them combined with wings.

he did cover that part:

redrex.9634:

For example, if you happen to meet an Owl, you may study it to be able to mimic its beak, wings and talons. Owl wings, unlike eagle wings, will provide different effects when you mimic them, and the beak and talons will each provide separate effects.

Similarly, drakes will provide you each with a different mimic, fire, ice, reef each providing you with a different effect. Fire Drake’s head might give you burning damage, whilst Drake torso will give you extra toughness and drake legs might grant you some stability.

You can also mix it up. Have a Drake’s head, Spider’s body and Lynx’s feet?
Mix burning damage with poison immunity with swiftness? sounds like fun!

Ah I overread that part xD

Wings =\= flying, don’t worry. They will be all implementable at the same time. I guess everyone envisions a transform class to mean that you would transform your whole body at once. I think that as a mechanic the ‘pick and mix’ transform is unique.

It’s also not as restrictive as other MMO’s which require transforms to be tied to your gameplay role. This way you can choose your own specialisations, which is closer to Anet’s own philosophy.

Awesome. I don’t know where you get the inspiration for all this mate, but it’s rather cool

I’m not gonna lie, Mimes were my favorite class in Final Fantasy Tactics. So many ideas, so much randomness. This isn’t the same thing obviously (well…obvious if you’ve ever used a Mime in Final Fantasy Tactics), but I like the idea nevertheless. A few concerns though…

• Mimicry can NOT be tied to any extreme visualization on your character. Example: You don’t get feathers for mimicking a bird, scales for a lizard, etc. Not only would this screw with a player’s outfit in a way they might not like (not to mention clipping), but no profession in the game has visual tells that might warn another player of their abilities (I’m talkin’ PvP/WvW).
• Would abilities be stowed in the same way rangers have pet lists? I could see a special class-specific menu, much like how rangers get a pet menu, used to tweak Head/Torso/Leg association.
• Heal/Utility, Each profession has a mix of roughly 20 utilities broken into sets (Warriors get stances, shouts, banners, signets, and physical attacks). I’m not quite sure what type of sets the Mimic would have, but figured I’d mention it to get some ideas going.
• While I like the idea of giving juveniles more use, there are a number of creatures in the game that could be mimicked, but aren’t tameable. Since the idea behind the Mimic is that (s)he studies the combat abilities of a creature, defeating 1 might be a more suitable approach instead of a simple key-stroke. Or, in certain cases, doing an event.

“But Eerekai, there’s a LOT of juvenile creatures to mimic!” Yeah, there are, but the tonics redrex is referring to cover a wide variety of creatures, a good chunk not tameable. But for the sake of argument, lets get a list of non-tameable creatures

1. Minotaurs
2. Imps
3. Riders (Wind Rider, Reef Rider, Irukandji [from Fractals], and possibly Steamrider)
4. Ooze
5. Bats
6. Harpies and Fleashreavers
7. Raptors
8. Griffons
9. Colocal
10. Dolyaks
11. Skales
12. Skelks
13. Cows/Bulls
14. Sea Turtles
15. Barracuda
16. Crabs
17. Deer/Sheep/Rams
18. Husks and Steam Hulks/Ogres
19. Trolls
20. Thunder Shrimp
21. Cavern Scutter
22. Pinipal

A lot of possibilities xD

Omg Eerekai nice; lets try discuss this further.

• Clipping issues with armour: I think these parts you changed with your mimics aren’t covered with armour. Animals don’t wear armour either. That brings following question: Should the mimic wear armour?!
  There are different aspects to this:
  - Stats: mimics definitely need something in those slots, cause we need to have options to change stats. What about “patterns”? Instead of armour you wear a specific pattern, that has it’s own stats and you can also upgrade them with runes & jewels.
  - No armour at all, or only the parts you can change?
  As it stands now: we can change our head, our legs and torso… I think we shouldn’t change torso, but change the arms. Those parts can transform, without clipping with the other armour parts: shoulders & torso.
  That is also a decision to be made.

• Heals/utilies: attributes associated with the creatures you mimic?
  Example: Dolyak’s resilience: gain extra health for a short period of time, making you able to hold out a little longer.
  I think you could some more of these.

• I like the idea for only being able to mimic a creature, after you’ve killed it. It’s genius.

Sirendor.1394:

Omg Eerekai nice; lets try discuss this further.

• Clipping issues with armour: I think these parts you changed with your mimics aren’t covered with armour. Animals don’t wear armour either. That brings following question: Should the mimic wear armour?!
  There are different aspects to this:
  - Stats: mimics definitely need something in those slots, cause we need to have options to change stats. What about “patterns”? Instead of armour you wear a specific pattern, that has it’s own stats and you can also upgrade them with runes & jewels.
  - No armour at all, or only the parts you can change?
  As it stands now: we can change our head, our legs and torso… I think we shouldn’t change torso, but change the arms. Those parts can transform, without clipping with the other armour parts: shoulders & torso.
  That is also a decision to be made.

I think armor in all slots is a must. Its a balancing/mechanics/fairness thing. All professions, regardless of playstyle, have 6 pieces of armor, a main-hand/off-hand or two-handed weapon set-up, and 6 trinket slots. It makes it so everyone can be built the same way and everyone goes through the same work to get their full set of gear.

Sirendor.1394:

• Heals/utilies: attributes associated with the creatures you mimic?
  Example: Dolyak’s resilience: gain extra health for a short period of time, making you able to hold out a little longer.
  I think you could some more of these.

This would be awesome. I can definitely see basing all the skills off of creatures that can be mimicked.

Sirendor.1394:

• I like the idea for only being able to mimic a creature, after you’ve killed it. It’s genius.

Just to clarify a little, this would be specifically for F1-F3 skills, not the heals and utilities. Getting a useful mimic would be a bit difficult if everything had to be obtained by killing stuff.

Now I could see there being SOME traits buffing X skill(s) if you have “Mimic X” learned (once again, that way you could play a “naked” Mimic and still be functional). Like uh…
Skill: Jungle Troll Jab ~ physical attack that poisons target for 5 seconds.
Trait: Noxious Nature ~ increases poison damage/duration. Requires Shadow Imp study.
or…
Skill: Gust ~ produces a large blast of wind to damage and knockdown/knockback the target. (mimicking harpies)
Trait: Demonic Fervor ~ Gust does increased damage and has a 20% chance to cause bleeding. Requires Fleshreaver study.

It’d be a very interesting style of play. Definitely not for everyone, but I can see it being extremely versatile and fitting perfectly with GW2.

I think it would be a pretty broad area of play.

I should clarify a point above: the mimicry isn’t permanent, it’s lasts as long as the skills last.

I chose ranger pets for programming ease, but if anet decided they wanted a mimic to be able to choose ANY in-game Npc for mimicry I would not complain. Breadth is what this profession is about!!!