[Mesmer] Mimic

[Mesmer] Mimic

in Profession Balance

Posted by: Dondagora.9645

Dondagora.9645

The mesmer forum-goers have been talking, and we remember a certain redesign to a skill that is now just bad in all areas of the game. If you didn’t know, Mimic was a skill which gave the mesmer a 4-second block after absorbing 1 projectile. The message could then use “Echo” to fire the projectile. It is now a skill which allows one to copy all boons of the target. There are numerous problems to this… change.

Firstly, it is not usable in all areas of the game. Some might argue that this is the same for all skills. But that isn’kitten This is quite literally useless in PvE, where the NPC enemies have no boons to copy. And no, it won’t help if you just give the enemies boons.

Secondly, the given reason for this change, I believe[may be wrong] is that it was underused in PvP. Now, it is completely unused because its whole purpose, copying boons, is overlapping with a much more useful skill in the same type as it. This skill is Arcane Thievery, which both sends conditions from yourself to the enemy and takes their boons[3 to each]. A boon-strip and a condi-cleanse. Compared to that, the new Mimic is much, much more situational and thus not worth taking.

Thirdly is, most insultingly, that this change was made on the same patch as the ranger buffs. Yes, it’s a spit in the face. Maybe ANet didn’t mean it this way, but it almost feels like we mesmers were balanced around the ranger changes, nerfed for this new meta. Maybe that 4 second block would save mesmers from that rapid-fire or 1500 range pew-pew. Maybe it would open up amazing counter-play options. Point is, it’s salt in the wound that we mesmers were nerfed to make rangers even stronger.

I hope Arena Net can see this and please either explain how the current Mimic is equal to or better than the old Mimic or consider reverting it or giving it another revamp.

[Mesmer] Mimic

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Posted by: Zenos Osgorma.2936

Zenos Osgorma.2936

Counter play for you / mesmer class , don’t mean counter play of equal measure for Ranged users.

all in all they weighted up the odds and made the changes , since Los and clones/illusions are counter play enough to stop LB rangers (unless they have Piercing arrows) 4second block would of been fine if the old channel of 5secs was still in effect since it Tracked for a longer amount of time.

the change was made to ether match that of the Tracking duration , and was pointed to be not worth matching so changed the effect of minic to copy boons to be more Viable vs All classes rather than just Ranged attacks of the Direct form , excluding barrage , or a warroirs LB aoe’s.

[Mesmer] Mimic

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Posted by: Ragnar the Rock.3174

Ragnar the Rock.3174

While I do agree mimic is the most useful in pvp I wouldn’t call it completely useless in PvE.

There are some mobs (most notably dredge) which often use might, protection etc… and do so for quite long duration applications.
By using mimic & or Arcane Thievery in combination with signet of inspiration I can give a decent number of stacks of might & quit e long duration protection to my entire group.

All that being said I do wish they would change mimic so that it could be used on any target including allies.
For instance, say you have a guardian ally who pops save yourselves. You could then immediately pop mimic on him & gain all the same boons.

[Mesmer] Mimic

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Posted by: Ragnar the Rock.3174

Ragnar the Rock.3174

If your truly having trouble with ranged enemies I would suggest pucking up the traits warden’s feedback & or masterful reflection.
The later works quite well with several different traits & can cause you to reflect ranged attacks quite often.

[Mesmer] Mimic

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Posted by: Dondagora.9645

Dondagora.9645

Counter play for you / mesmer class , don’t mean counter play of equal measure for Ranged users.

all in all they weighted up the odds and made the changes , since Los and clones/illusions are counter play enough to stop LB rangers (unless they have Piercing arrows) 4second block would of been fine if the old channel of 5secs was still in effect since it Tracked for a longer amount of time.

the change was made to ether match that of the Tracking duration , and was pointed to be not worth matching so changed the effect of minic to copy boons to be more Viable vs All classes rather than just Ranged attacks of the Direct form , excluding barrage , or a warroirs LB aoe’s.

The counter play would have to be reactive or predictive, which would require some level of skill. But, that’s more of an opinion matter.

Now, your second point and last point can be rebuked in a single argument, which I will present thus: Mimic now gives neither counter play nor is useful against all classes. More so, it can be said to be useless in any situation. Also, Mimic has combos which allowed the mesmer to trigger the block himself, thus making it usable against all classes if they’re smart.

Even disregarding the ranger changes which are more of the salt than the wound, the changes to mimic were overall negative. Even if ANet had the best of intentions for the revamp, Mimic has become what I believe is the most useless skill in the game. Thus, it is only rational to buff or revamp such a skill.

[Mesmer] Mimic

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Posted by: Dondagora.9645

Dondagora.9645

While I do agree mimic is the most useful in pvp I wouldn’t call it completely useless in PvE.

There are some mobs (most notably dredge) which often use might, protection etc… and do so for quite long duration applications.
By using mimic & or Arcane Thievery in combination with signet of inspiration I can give a decent number of stacks of might & quit e long duration protection to my entire group.

All that being said I do wish they would change mimic so that it could be used on any target including allies.
For instance, say you have a guardian ally who pops save yourselves. You could then immediately pop mimic on him & gain all the same boons.

Firstly, have you ever once seen a mesmer use this as their game plan? There are countless numbers of more useful utility which can achieve better results. I, for one, don’t see mesmers running mimic in any situation, even against dredge. Sure, the combo is cool in theory, but it is one of the least optimal strategies in 99%[my own made-up statistic] of PvE out of all the actual strategies of every class.

Also, I’d like to correct you: It is not more useful in PvP. It is currently viewed as weak in PvP as it is in PvE.

If your truly having trouble with ranged enemies I would suggest pucking up the traits warden’s feedback & or masterful reflection.
The later works quite well with several different traits & can cause you to reflect ranged attacks quite often.

I’m not having problems with ranged enemies. The thing I have a problem with is having underwhelming skill in the mesmer kitten nal. I brought up the ranger buff because it felt like ANet just nerfed a mesmer’s range-defense at the same time as buffing the ranger’s range-offense in order to make the ranger seem stronger. This might not have been the intent, but it was outright insulting to be nerfed for such a reason. And this is, indeed, a nerf revamp given how 10% of mesmers[made-up statistic] ran it before while maybe 0.00000001% or less[made-up statistic] run it now.

(edited by Dondagora.9645)

[Mesmer] Mimic

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Posted by: Ragnar the Rock.3174

Ragnar the Rock.3174

While I do agree mimic is the most useful in pvp I wouldn’t call it completely useless in PvE.

There are some mobs (most notably dredge) which often use might, protection etc… and do so for quite long duration applications.
By using mimic & or Arcane Thievery in combination with signet of inspiration I can give a decent number of stacks of might & quit e long duration protection to my entire group.

All that being said I do wish they would change mimic so that it could be used on any target including allies.
For instance, say you have a guardian ally who pops save yourselves. You could then immediately pop mimic on him & gain all the same boons.

Firstly, have you ever once seen a mesmer use this as their game plan? There are countless numbers of more useful utility which can achieve better results. I, for one, don’t see mesmers running mimic in any situation, even against dredge. Sure, the combo is cool in theory, but it is one of the least optimal strategies in 99%[my own made-up statistic] of PvE out of all the actual strategies of every class.

Also, I’d like to correct you: It is not more useful in PvP. It is currently viewed as weak in PvP as it is in PvE.

If your truly having trouble with ranged enemies I would suggest pucking up the traits warden’s feedback & or masterful reflection.
The later works quite well with several different traits & can cause you to reflect ranged attacks quite often.

I’m not having problems with ranged enemies. The thing I have a problem with is having underwhelming skill in the mesmer kitten nal. I brought up the ranger buff because it felt like ANet just nerfed a mesmer’s range-defense at the same time as buffing the ranger’s range-offense in order to make the ranger seem stronger. This might not have been the intent, but it was outright insulting to be nerfed for such a reason. And this is, indeed, a nerf revamp given how 10% of mesmers[made-up statistic] ran it before while maybe 0.00000001% or less[made-up statistic] run it now.

I understand how you feel about having a near useless skill, allot of classes still have them.

Best advice I can offer is make sensible suggestions, keep making them & keep getting more people to agree with you.

Arena.net knows that said skills are rarely used if ever & if enough people speak up they will likely change them.

Who knows they might be planning a large amount of changes. They did just get over 110 million a while back for “future development” from their overlords at NCSoft.

[Mesmer] Mimic

in Profession Balance

Posted by: Dondagora.9645

Dondagora.9645

While I do agree mimic is the most useful in pvp I wouldn’t call it completely useless in PvE.

There are some mobs (most notably dredge) which often use might, protection etc… and do so for quite long duration applications.
By using mimic & or Arcane Thievery in combination with signet of inspiration I can give a decent number of stacks of might & quit e long duration protection to my entire group.

All that being said I do wish they would change mimic so that it could be used on any target including allies.
For instance, say you have a guardian ally who pops save yourselves. You could then immediately pop mimic on him & gain all the same boons.

Firstly, have you ever once seen a mesmer use this as their game plan? There are countless numbers of more useful utility which can achieve better results. I, for one, don’t see mesmers running mimic in any situation, even against dredge. Sure, the combo is cool in theory, but it is one of the least optimal strategies in 99%[my own made-up statistic] of PvE out of all the actual strategies of every class.

Also, I’d like to correct you: It is not more useful in PvP. It is currently viewed as weak in PvP as it is in PvE.

If your truly having trouble with ranged enemies I would suggest pucking up the traits warden’s feedback & or masterful reflection.
The later works quite well with several different traits & can cause you to reflect ranged attacks quite often.

I’m not having problems with ranged enemies. The thing I have a problem with is having underwhelming skill in the mesmer kitten nal. I brought up the ranger buff because it felt like ANet just nerfed a mesmer’s range-defense at the same time as buffing the ranger’s range-offense in order to make the ranger seem stronger. This might not have been the intent, but it was outright insulting to be nerfed for such a reason. And this is, indeed, a nerf revamp given how 10% of mesmers[made-up statistic] ran it before while maybe 0.00000001% or less[made-up statistic] run it now.

I understand how you feel about having a near useless skill, allot of classes still have them.

Best advice I can offer is make sensible suggestions, keep making them & keep getting more people to agree with you.

Arena.net knows that said skills are rarely used if ever & if enough people speak up they will likely change them.

Who knows they might be planning a large amount of changes. They did just get over 110 million a while back for “future development” from their overlords at NCSoft.

I may be getting this wrong, but I feel a condescending attitude from you. It may just be because of how I’m reading it.

Anyway, I know every class has such skills[sadly, I don’t play anything other than mesmer, so I can’t give examples]. I’m not saying mesmer is less fortunate than any other class, but just because every class has useless skills doesn’t make the situation alright. I’d encourage, in this case, for those of every class to bring attention to this issue.

There have been plenty of discussion and negative feedback about Mimic in the mesmer forums but only a little in the profession forums, where I suspect ANet to frequent more than the class-specific sections. Therefore, as you said, I am bringing it to attention for the sake of change. The problem I have with making suggestion, however, is that I do not have a full view of GW2 balancing and personally feel such suggestion threads turn into a discussion of how bad or everything wrong with the suggestion, and thus mostly ignored by ANet. Instead, I believe a general thread will be more productive where everyone can give their own thoughts and suggestions of and for Mimic which ANet can gather more varied and encompassing data of the community’s opinions.

[Mesmer] Mimic

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Posted by: Curunen.8729

Curunen.8729

I understand how you feel about having a near useless skill, allot of classes still have them.

Best advice I can offer is make sensible suggestions, keep making them & keep getting more people to agree with you.

Arena.net knows that said skills are rarely used if ever & if enough people speak up they will likely change them.

Who knows they might be planning a large amount of changes. They did just get over 110 million a while back for “future development” from their overlords at NCSoft.

The point is that it was not useless before that big patch a few months ago. It was a good skill but in need of some love – but instead it was utterly destroyed. They should have just deleted the skill from our utility bar instead of “remaking” it into something that serves absolutely no purpose on the mesmer’s precious 3 utility slots.

It was very situational. It required very niche builds to make use of – for example making use of winds of chaos or mirror blade to trigger the block.

It had one of the coolest animations in the game (bubble shield). It was good against ranged projectiles – getting a warrior to killshot themselves was priceless. It was a fantastic aoe channeled block, allowing you to tank everything for 4 seconds.

It had a few problems in that it was not easy to use outside of very niche applications – and this is what should have been revamped.

Instead, Anet, probably through fear of not wanting to have any hard counter builds to the pew pew buff (ie, running mirror, traited focus, mimic…) very uncreatively decided to kill it and pretty much make an inferior version of arcane thievery.

It is not unique anymore, it is absolutely useless. They took a skill with awesome visual animation, unique effects but difficult to use in many situations – required forethought in order to trigger the block through using bouncing attacks, and completely destroyed it.

This is total nonsense.

(edited by Curunen.8729)

[Mesmer] Mimic

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Posted by: Clownmug.8357

Clownmug.8357

I miss being able to throw Veteran Wurm ice boulders at people in wvw.

[Mesmer] Mimic

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Posted by: Nettle.9025

Nettle.9025

I don’t think they took Mimic far enough. Would be interesting if, on top of copying all boons, it also copied your target’s health percentage and conditions.

This would be powerful in allowing a near death mesmer a large heal + boons, but balanced by the chance of getting a lot of conditions you might not want either.

Badding up tourneys since 2012
NA tPvP – Elementalist – Thief

[Mesmer] Mimic

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Posted by: Zenos Osgorma.2936

Zenos Osgorma.2936

I see what you all are saying , but inherently Range has more counters to it , those block skills like counter attack or War sword 5 all block ranged opposed to a 4 sec block on the old mimic that would also Obsorb the skill and fire it back.

that was a 100% damage migration with Return damage , aka a Heavy hard counter, that effected Ranged skills by negating them with the press of a button.

though them making it copy boons was a step in the right direction so this utility skill (isn’t treated as a hard counter) it would of been a different story is it was a weapon skill that needed active use.

Maybe it would be better if it worked like this.

Minic = copy targets boons Stage one
Echo= Sacrifice boons and copy the targets last used skill/Utility , you’ll have to give up those boons to Actively use the skill or utility.

this way you could time the use of this utility to ether Protect yourself using the full duration of those boons or Torment the target with his own skills/utilities)
after using Minic you’ll have lets say 30secs to target the skill/utility you want to counter with.

echo a rangers gs counter attack > kb into shatter without having to use Weapon skills , deadly powerful but also risky due to sacrificing boons.

though this will allow you the user to Create counterplays without it being Class targeted as a hard counter. best of both worlds.

though i agree that just gaining copyies of boons isn’t enough , the point of the change was to stop it being a hard counter utility , best way to make a skill stronger in balance terms without power creeping a different skill , is to nurf its counter directly though mimic needs somthing else and i think the echo idea is perfect for that.

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Posted by: Dondagora.9645

Dondagora.9645

I see what you all are saying , but inherently Range has more counters to it , those block skills like counter attack or War sword 5 all block ranged opposed to a 4 sec block on the old mimic that would also Obsorb the skill and fire it back.

that was a 100% damage migration with Return damage , aka a Heavy hard counter, that effected Ranged skills by negating them with the press of a button.

though them making it copy boons was a step in the right direction so this utility skill (isn’t treated as a hard counter) it would of been a different story is it was a weapon skill that needed active use.

Maybe it would be better if it worked like this.

Minic = copy targets boons Stage one
Echo= Sacrifice boons and copy the targets last used skill/Utility , you’ll have to give up those boons to Actively use the skill or utility.

this way you could time the use of this utility to ether Protect yourself using the full duration of those boons or Torment the target with his own skills/utilities)
after using Minic you’ll have lets say 30secs to target the skill/utility you want to counter with.

echo a rangers gs counter attack > kb into shatter without having to use Weapon skills , deadly powerful but also risky due to sacrificing boons.

though this will allow you the user to Create counterplays without it being Class targeted as a hard counter. best of both worlds.

though i agree that just gaining copyies of boons isn’t enough , the point of the change was to stop it being a hard counter utility , best way to make a skill stronger in balance terms without power creeping a different skill , is to nurf its counter directly though mimic needs somthing else and i think the echo idea is perfect for that.

While I get what you’re saying, this just makes the skill very strange and confusing. Plus, designing the skill to do both of what you said is basically combining two skills into one in a very ugly manner.

The greater problem with your suggestion lies in PvE: what would the mesmer copy then? Boons are rare, and will ANet really allow us to absorb various skills from NPC enemies? I think not.

Also, as I understood it, Echo would not absorb the skill, but just the single projectile. Correct me if I’m wrong on this, by the way. Thus, if a mesmer blocked Rapid Fire with his/her[gender equality] Mimic, he would only fire back a single arrow of the Rapid Fire.

As for it being class-specific, this is wrong in the sense that all classes use projectiles in some manner or form, and it doesn’t become too situational once a mesmer masters triggering the Mimic himself/herself[gender equality]. While you might say a mesmer triggering it himself/herself[gender equality] means Mimic is flawed in design, I say that the design is even more perfect as it opened up space for players to learn such interesting combinations.

I don’t see many downsides with it being reverted, as it won’t become something OP since it’s more defensive in nature.