Guild Wars 2

Arcane Thievery and Mimic are two skills that most closely relate to when Mesmer was truly Mesmer (gw1). I’d love to use them but they just aren’t good enough. I mean they are good in and of themselves but they don’t fit in any of the few useful builds mes has left.

To make Arcane Thievery useful I think you’d need to make it AoE (240 radius), Mimic is a very strong utility for very niche situations and I think its best to leave it at that.

Mimic is useless. The old Mimic, “Copy EVERY boon on your foe to yourself” was GREAT.

It meant that no, you’re not going to simply out dps me regardless of what I do. It put you and the opponent on near equal playing fields.

If you had 20+ Stacks of might tons of stability, protection aegis regeneration etc…so did I.

Coulter.2315:

To make Arcane Thievery useful I think you’d need to make it AoE (240 radius), Mimic is a very strong utility for very niche situations and I think its best to leave it at that.

I agree its okay… but there has to be something you can do that would make it more useful to bring in a specific build over another skill. Reduce CD to start… but that’s the typical lazy-man approach

Taltevus.3289:

Mimic is useless. The old Mimic, “Copy EVERY boon on your foe to yourself” was GREAT.

It meant that no, you’re not going to simply out dps me regardless of what I do. It put you and the opponent on near equal playing fields.

If you had 20+ Stacks of might tons of stability, protection aegis regeneration etc…so did I.

No, that version of mimic was patently awful. It had a long cooldown so you rarely got to use it, and the vast majority of boons in the game are low duration with high reapplication rates, so you copied all their 5s long boons…which then ran out and left you with nothing.

I really like the idea of Arcane Thievery being an ground targeted AOE boon corrupt. That would definitely justify the long CD of kitten in my opinion.

Coulter.2315:

To make Arcane Thievery useful I think you’d need to make it AoE (240 radius), Mimic is a very strong utility for very niche situations and I think its best to leave it at that.

That’s not a bad idea at all.

What I’d do:

Arcane Thievery
Target area and an area around you swap boons and conditions. Conditions are transferred from around you to the target area, boons are ripped from enemies in the target area and given to you and players around you.
Radius (self): 240
Radius (target): 240
Number of boons transferred: 12
Number of conditions transferred: 12
Max. targets: 5
Max. number of effects per target: 3

This would prioritize from the center. Meaning you get boons until you got 3, then others bleed onto targets around you. Likewise conditions are first taken from you, and boons first ripped from someone right next to the center of the target area.