Guild Wars 2

I predict:

1. New mimic will be OP (perhaps too low a recharge?)
2. Anet will nerf around it and destroy several other skills to “fix” the problem.
3. Mesmers will end up with fewer good skills overall.

Are you guys crazy? mimic copying boons would actually go in hand with its name, you mimic boons!

Think about this scenario… say Crucible of eternity or Honor of the Waves 1…. where the boss spams boons non stop, first you use the new mimic, followed by arcane thievery, then you use signet of inspiration, there, you can give like 1minute plus of protection, regen, retaliation etc…

Nemitri.8172:

Are you guys crazy? mimic copying boons would actually go in hand with its name, you mimic boons!

Think about this scenario… say Crucible of eternity or Honor of the Waves 1…. where the boss spams boons non stop, first you use the new mimic, followed by arcane thievery, then you use signet of inspiration, there, you can give like 1minute plus of protection, regen, retaliation etc…

1) I don’t care about a skills name, I care about it’s function.
2) PvE is redundant gameplay and has little to no effect on anything with consciousness. All you need in PvE is the best class with the best AA in full zerk, and maybe a good coffee maker so you can go get a hot drink while your toon burns down a boss.

3) I’m not jaded about the mimic change and am waiting to see exactly what it is before weighing in.

As it is now, Mimic could be usefull in PvE, PvP (or any 1v1) areas.
In WvW, it’s hard to use it cuz it treats projectiles and melee attacks in different ways:
you need to absorb a projectile to be immune from melee attacks, too. However you can’t absorb any projectile if a melee class controls you in the meantime.
Plus:
1. You get affected by the first projectile effect in any case (dazed, stunned, controlled, immobilized or any other condition, most of them make the follow up immuninty worthless).
2. If you are immune, you reflect any other projectile, but you don’t reflect melee attacks.

If you go full-signet build, as I’m running now, you can do exactly the same (1s immunity + reflection, (3signets + F4 = up to 6s), plus 3×1 condi cleanse). As it is now, Mimic is just planty of “if-then”’s.

Blades of Sabatine.5639:

Simple scenario
Mez – copies boon with mimic,
Mez – Strip boon with null field,
Mez – copies all boon to allies,

then it gets stunned one time and dies…

What Askadia said is so true. If your enemy isn’t using projectiles on you it’s a complete waste to slot mimic right now. And we already have other options that can do a simular things, mirror for example.

In the reworked form it will not only work good against certain classes that always have many boons up but it will help in every groupfight and it will help us survive and/or deal more damage because many other classes have easier access to boons than we have. This seems like a really good change but it all depends on cd and casttime if it will be too strong, too weak or good.
It will not be good in pve if it can only be used on enemies because the number of boonstacking mobs isn’t very high and AT will be enough.

By the way, is anyone using illusion of life? Can we make that next on the list of crappy utilities?

From the profession balance Ready Up (courtesy of Dulfy):

Ready Up

Mesmer: Misdirection, crowd control, utility. Brought in for utility all the way from GW1.

Weakness: Conditions are hard to deal with. Lack of AoE – good single target damage but weak at AoE situation. (A bit weaker than where we want to be. We don’t want to make it too strong as we want you to bring Eles for ranged AoE damage). Mobility – not a ton of mobility due to lack of swiftness but they do have a lot of teleports such as portals. Mesmer can get there and back with portals but can’t go too far forward due to lack of swiftness. Low defense against high burst damage – maybe some small tweaks.
Official design: Access to key utility skills. Gain defense through stealth, evasion, misdirection. Strong 1v1 ranged damage dealer but weaker in sustained AoE damage. Weakness – conditional removal, sustainability if illusions are countered, AoE damage make it hard to sustain illusions.

I don’t want to treat these balance notes as gospel (this is the same Ready Up in which the devs stated that Warriors need more escape options, which just screams ‘I have never played this game’), but it would be nice to think that there was some clear vision for how Mesmers should be. I cannot see how the new Mimic fits into this proposed vision at all. It feels like a very ad hoc change, unconnected to any broader design philosophy, in order to ‘rescue’ a little-used skill which has always worked strangely.