I am once again begging for Mimic 3 to visually indicate its anti-DPS Rush mechanic.

[Own]

Over the years I've seen people quit out of Mimic 3 thinking they just need to go grind more. Or they have completely quit the game in frustration in the case of Two Brothers Play. People throw away otherwise good arcade mode runs because they learned in story mode that if they just spam DPS hard enough they can try to get Mimic 3 down to 0 HP. Bad strategies developed in story mode create hard walls in arcade mode.

These people never realize that their damage has gone down significantly, because they're not paying attention to their damage numbers amidst the chaos. The flood of enemies just make them panic and think they need to burst even harder.

So here's a list of possible solutions to mitigate that.

1. Make the Mimic invincible while vomiting to prevent DPS rushing during what is perceived to be a free DPS opening, lining players up for 2-3 vomits in a row. Not a great solution, but it is one.

2. Make the Mimic's HP bar turn gray so long as enemies are on field, as if to indicate that it is currently shielded by enemies. The more enemies there are, the darker gray it gets.

3. Put a shield icon on Mimic's HP bar while enemies are on the field. Potentially with the number on the enemies on field top of it. Visually indicating that each one is contributing to the Mimic's defense.

4. Have Bag's death tooltip say the Mimic's defenses are being hardened by the monsters instead of "Focus on the enemies to avoid being overwhelmed", because that quote implies that you can just kill Mimic fast enough to avoid being monster overwhelmed if you just get stronger.

5. If the boss room ends up having 15 or 20+ enemies present at once, once per boss battle attempt have a Bag tooltip popup saying that the boss is being defended by its minions. Destroy them to weaken it.

And... if at all possible, could summons be toggled not to attack the boss while enemies are out? Frosty is a huge contributor to vomit wave problems. The only way to get him to stop wailing on the boss is to outright desummon and resummon him.

 

[Literally Who]

Ironically enough, I only ever did DPS skips in low cat arcade because of how flimsy the boss's HP is, and thought that story mode DPS skipping wasn't possible because my only point of reference was hardmode, where I quickly got highly discouraged from trying to take DPS shortcuts when a red gigaslime was fielded amongst a dozen of other rabble.

I personally think the first suggestion of giving mimic high defense or invincibility during the enemy vomit phase (much like it gets near invincibility during the final Phase 2 attack) is the best route to go with, because the minion defense mechanic doesn't feel like a natural in-world part of a monster's behavior, but rather an artifical mechanical balancing measure, if you get my meaning. The bag's tooltip seemed natural to understand to me, but if it confuses others, I figured that just adding the word "other" (focus on the other enemies) should make it crystal clear.

Alternatively, the mimic could also be fattened up with HP in normal mode to the point where it's as resillient as the hard mode version but doesn't hurt you as much. One of the problems with DPS skipping is if you're fast enough - you can skip the ENTIRE monster wave. Say, you bring it to 25% HP while it is still finishing its 100% HP enemy vomit - it skips to the 25% vomit and never fields the monsters from 75% and 50%. This is something I discovered in the Arcade, because the hard mode mimic had too many fat folds for me to cleave through. If the normal mode mimic gets enough HP to field all the monsters and allow them to swarm the player - the problem with developing bad habits regarding DPS bursting should likely be lifted.

 

[Own]

Every time I think about this I do think making Mimic immune while puking, as in the same way 'GUARD' pops up when you hit a defeated GUNDAM's head, really is the best solution to this problem.

It turns what seems like an obvious "oh hey I need to go all in and smack this thing" DPS opening into an indication that you need to get the heck away from it.