Guild Wars 2

I have to admit something. These two trait and utilities work very well on a staff build. The play style is actually very erratic and fun.

How about you explain a little more? Very few people use mimic, and even less people probably use retaliatory shield.

pretty obvious if you just look at what each does.

i’d imagine you get insane duration of retaliation if you block many times during mimic.

yea i was just thinking of a build like this + rune of guardian for the burn on block. does rune of guardian has cooldown on the burn application? if it doesnt, it would work really well against multi hit skills

Shhhhh don’t tell anyone about this or they will probably put an internal cooldown on retaliatory shield trait.

Mimic have a powerful secondary effect.

After the utility absorb a projectile, the skill will reflect all projectiles and block all other attacks for the rest of the channel duration

The cool thing about the utility is that you can absorb friendly fire which resonate well with a staff build.

The skill has a low cd but of course the skill is not easy to use. This utility makes fighting a little more interesting and more punishing.

In fact, the actual reflect of Mimic is largely useless because of how rarely a single projectile is really powerful.

For example, you cannot “catch” an entire cluster shot from a thief, in which case that’d be rather useful. Or some of the very powerful single-shot boss projectiles.

OTOH, 4s of ranged block… yeah!

You can catch a warriors rifle “f” skill though. granted you survived :P

its not juts ranged block, it’s all block. similar to warrior shield block.

wads.5730:

its not juts ranged block, it’s all block. similar to warrior shield block.

it doesnt block projectiles. The utility reflects them.

so does warrior blocks, if you trait for it.

but the point was that your immune from damage from both melee or ranged attacks. and not just ranged.

wads.5730:

so does warrior blocks, if you trait for it.

but the point was that your immune from damage from both melee or ranged attacks. and not just ranged.

But only if you catch a ranged hit first, right?

yes, and the first hit also can’t daze/stun or otherwise interrupt you, because you take full damage and effect from the first projectile.

unless you also happen to have stability, then you can absorb a stunning projectile too.

You can also be CC’ed out of the blocking portion of mimic as well… at least you should be able to, haven’t actually tested it.

I used to like mimic a lot, but I only liked it for the blocking/reflect. It just has a very awkward design, and the echo ability is not very useful. You will often just absorb an auto-attack that is just underwhelming. I’ve also just been CC’ed out of it trying to absorb a projectile, and the whole thing just ends up being a liability. You also can’t do anything else while it’s up, similar to how the prestige ability on the torch used to work. IMO, mimic definitely needs some work, and echo is just a slap in the face to the GW1 equivalent.

The best use I had of it once was in a fight with an engg. I ran up to them with it on, and they completely unloaded their rifle attacks into me after hitting me with an auto-attack, first immobilizing themself, then bleeding themselves, and finally blasting themselves back with their own attacks. Then I killed them while they was recovering.

I was thinking it’d be neat to absorb a warrior rifle kill shot and shoot that back with echo, but I’ve never had that happen.

Retaliation can only be stacked up to 5 times, so the most you’re getting out this combo is 15seconds before boon duration. You get 5s of retaliation from one light + leap combo, and you only need 3 to beat Mimic + Retaliatory Shield which leaves 2 slots open for more retaliation. Even better, a simple combo from sword+focus (Temporal Curtain → Illusionary Leap → Swap) already gives you those 3 stacks.

So while Mimic + RS may have effective synergy, let’s not get carried away here :p

ChaosStar.3162:

Retaliation can only be stacked up to 5 times, so the most you’re getting out this combo is 15seconds before boon duration. You get 5s of retaliation from one light + leap combo, and you only need 3 to beat Mimic + Retaliatory Shield which leaves 2 slots open for more retaliation. Even better, a simple combo from sword+focus (Temporal Curtain -> Illusionary Leap -> Swap) already gives you those 3 stacks.

So while Mimic + RS may have effective synergy, let’s not get carried away here :p

You have no idea what you’re talking about. With this combo, you will get 3 seconds of retaliation per blocked hit up to the cap of 30ish seconds.

Pyroatheist.9031:

ChaosStar.3162:

Retaliation can only be stacked up to 5 times, so the most you’re getting out this combo is 15seconds before boon duration. You get 5s of retaliation from one light + leap combo, and you only need 3 to beat Mimic + Retaliatory Shield which leaves 2 slots open for more retaliation. Even better, a simple combo from sword+focus (Temporal Curtain -> Illusionary Leap -> Swap) already gives you those 3 stacks.

So while Mimic + RS may have effective synergy, let’s not get carried away here :p

You have no idea what you’re talking about. With this combo, you will get 3 seconds of retaliation per blocked hit up to the cap of 30ish seconds.

How is s/he wrong? The wiki says the duration for retaliation stacks only 5 times and nothing about a 30 second cap. At most, you could get 6 stacks (18 sec) of retaliation from mimic+RS because 1 stack will expire before mimic ends (at 0% boon duration). Unless you know something that’s not on the wiki.

Pyroatheist.9031:

You have no idea what you’re talking about. With this combo, you will get 3 seconds of retaliation per blocked hit up to the cap of 30ish seconds.

I’m afraid it is you who does not know what you are talking about.

As of the February patch Retaliation only stacks 5 times. There is no “30ish second” cap; it is a 5 stack cap.

Reduced the number of maximum of stacks of Retaliation allowed to five (was 25). Duration still stacks.

Thus, the maximum length of retaliation from Mimic is 15seconds, before boon duration. This can only be extended if one of your stacks runs out and thus frees up space for a new stack.

Still not satisfied? I present you to the screenshots from the testing I did 5minutes ago. Here I absorb Winds of Chaos with Mimic and proceed to block the enemy’s Arc Lightning for the next 4 seconds. You will notice in this collection of screenshots there are approximately 7 unique “blocks” yet my retaliation stack never goes beyond 13 – quite considerably shorter than the 21 it should be. You will also notice towards the end of the collection the additional blocks are not adding any retaliation at all; I’m already capped out and cannot add any more regardless of how many attacks I block.

http://imgur.com/a/ZfJF9

ChaosStar.3162:

Retaliation can only be stacked up to 5 times, so the most you’re getting out this combo is 15seconds before boon duration. You get 5s of retaliation from one light + leap combo, and you only need 3 to beat Mimic + Retaliatory Shield which leaves 2 slots open for more retaliation. Even better, a simple combo from sword+focus (Temporal Curtain -> Illusionary Leap -> Swap) already gives you those 3 stacks.

So while Mimic + RS may have effective synergy, let’s not get carried away here :p

not comparable.

sword/focus requires a completely different play style in comparison to a staff build.

The whole point of the combo is for the actually using the retaliation. The fact is that you can stack choas storm and sheild to make this combo more effective.

In a pvp match, would you rather have a combo that procs and do not take damage or another combo that just gives a longer boon duration.

I’ve been using mimic a lot lately in sPvP using this s/s build. I’m really loving this skill/trait combination!