User:Krschkr/Balancing/PvE Elementalist Buff Concept

Concept for a PvE elementalist tweak with the following goals and characteristics:
 * 1) Increase the popularity of elementalists.
 * 2) Keep secondary and low level elementalists viable.
 * 3) Don't overpower PvE elementalist foes.
 * 4) Stay as close as possible to the current functionality of the profession.
 * 5) No effects on PvP.
 * 6) Small workload for the developers by achieving relevant effects with a minimum amount of changes.

TL;DR: Energy storage returns energy on successfully cast elementalist skills.

Attributes
Energy Storage The energy return is meant to happen once a skill is successfully cast.
 * Old functionality: For each point invested into energy storage your maximum energy is increased by 3.
 * New functionality: For each point invested into energy storage your maximum energy is increased by 3. In PvE, each rank of Energy Storage returns 3% of elementalist skills' base cost.

Like attunements, the energy return should work for elementalist skills, not just elementalist spells.

Round half to even. For the resulting energy return, see this table.

This change is exclusive to PvE! Just like in case of the current fast casting, the attribute will require a PvE/PvP split in its functionality.

Skills
Part (A): Change the functionality of the attunements. For the intended scaling of the attunement attribute bonus, refer to this table.

For the resulting energy return of the attunement, refer to this table or, if you want to see the combined effect of new energy storage and new attunement, that table. The energy return by pre-change attunements can be found in yet another table.

Part (B): Introduce PvP versions of the attunements that are exact copies of the pre-change skill functionalities. This way PvP remains unaffected once some NPCs receive the PvP version of their attunement.

Other
Due to the nature of the changes no AI update is required. Neither does the change screw up any NPC skill bars for good, so no PvE skill bars require an update (see also: Expected effect on the performance of NPCs). However, some PvP NPCs should receive the new PvP version of their attunement. The following three lists are separated between high, medium and low priority.
 * High Priority – PvP henchmen. The attunements of all PvP henchmen need to be changed to their PvP version.
 * Vinson
 * Hinata
 * Luzy Fiera
 * Motoko Kai
 * Vincent Evan
 * Bacchi Coi
 * Hobba Inaste
 * Rollo Lowlo
 * Suzu
 * Medium Priority – other PvP. In order to avoid changes to some PvP modes, consider exchanging the attunement with its new PvP version.
 * Luxon Storm Caller (Jade Quarry) (Note: This NPC currently uses [[Lightning Hammer] instead of [[Lightning Hammer (PvP)]; this could be fixed while addressing the attunement.)
 * Kurzick Thunder (Jade Quarry)
 * Luxon Elite Elementalist (Alliance Battles)
 * Kurzick Elite Elementalist (Alliance Battles)
 * The Costume Brawl elementalist build. (This may actually happen automatically in the outpost!)

Explanation
There are a couple of things that make elementalists unfavoured despite their rework in 2011. This minimalistic set of tweaks addresses the following core issue and its derived issues:
 * Every element based build requires an attunement and a cover enchantment for it as base energy management.
 * The game mode Codex Arenas features henchmen with only 6 skills. However, ArenaNet acknowledged the peculiar situation of elementalists and gave the elementalist henchman a 7th skill to compensate for the attunement requirement.
 * Interruption of the attunement or enchantment removal will easily render elementalists less effective for extended periods of time.
 * Attunement and cover enchantment require setup time, making the elementalist cumbersome and inconvenient to play.
 * These enchantments consume skill slots that could otherwise be used for utility skills.
 * Most builds require energy management on top of the attunement and its cover enchantment, further clogging the skill bar.

Other problems, such as the almost exclusively armour dependent damage, are not touched. In spite of such nuisances elementalists can be effective in most areas. Deploying tactics such as picking targets with lower armour ratings, bringing damage types that are more effective in a specific area or applying cracked armour help alleviate the armour respectiveness problem. Further increasing the elementalist damage output per skill seems inappropriate given their current power levels. Less easily countered elementalists would allow to make proper use of their current offensive power level without giving in to the power creep temptation too much.

Expected effect for primary profession usage

 * Low-level elementalists will not suffer any drawbacks as the attunement will work the same for them as with the old functionality.
 * Mid-level elementalists will gain back a bit more energy from skills with a base cost of 5 energy (see here).
 * Level 20 elementalists would no longer be required to play with an attunement for builds with a moderate energy consumption.
 * Elementalists would become viable in areas with frequent or deep enchantment removal.
 * Elementalists would be less cumbersome to play by reducing/removing their currently mandatory preparation time prior to combat.
 * Attunements could still be used to slightly ease energy management and slightly improve the properties of the attunement's element's spells. Getting the +2 attribute bonus from an attunement will require 13 energy storage, which means committing to a single element build.
 * Elementalists would often have one or two additional skill slots for damage or utility skills at their disposal.
 * It is to be expected that [[Glyph of Lesser Energy] will take the place of Attunement + [[Elemental Lord]/[[Aura of Restoration] in builds featuring few high-energy cost spells. This would mean freeing up one skill slot. For low energy cost builds the skills [[Shock Arrow], [[Glowing Ice], [[Glowstone] and [[Glowing Gaze] will remain better suited.
 * Some players who focus on one attribute line may increase their energy storage with a major or superior attribute rune to hit certain break points and further improve their energy management. This benefit would be paid in a loss of maximum health points and provide a reason to invest into energy storage rather than a secondary attribute. Right now energy storage only offers minor benefits.
 * Single element builds without a secondary profession attribute will have a slightly better and much more resilient energy management with the option to increase their element's attribute level with the new attunement functionality.
 * Single element builds with a secondary profession attribute usually invest 9+1 energy stoage and 9 . For such builds the energy storage change would not have a major impact: If these builds keep their attunement their net energy recovery per spell would mostly stay the same, but favour energy 5 elementalist skills a bit more than before. If they drop their attunement altogether, their energy management will be worse than before. Using slightly less expensive skill alternatives or replacing the attunement with previously unused energy management skills (such as [[Glyph of Lesser Energy], [[Aura of Restoration] or [[Shock Arrow]) would likely open up additional build variants and an increased adaptability towards the respective content one designs the build for.
 * Dual element builds (such as fire magic combined with air magic) would immediately become much more attractive as mixing skills from two attributes would no longer limit one attribute line to cheap off-use skills due to lacking their respective attunement. An attribute split of 11-10-10 (11+1+2-10+2-10+1; 12+1+2-10+1-8+2) would allow effective mixed builds without the currently peculiar energy management situation.
 * [[Elemental Attunement] remains the go-to elite skill for builds using highest energy cost skills, such as [[Rodgort's Invocation] and [[Lightning Hammer]. It will also be a great elite skill for dual element builds.
 * [[Master of Magic] remains the go-to elite skill for attributes using three to four elements or two elements alongside secondary profession attributes. As this elite is only played with high ranks in energy storage, master of magic builds will have an improved energy management compared to the current version without making energy management too easy (that's what you have [[Elemental Attunement] for!). It's also changed to include non-spell elemental attribute skills to make it more viable (glyphs and touch skills are currently unaffected by master of magic but covered by attunements).
 * No currently playable builds would be lost, but additional playable builds and new variants of existing builds should show up.
 * All currently playable builds should become slightly more enjoyable and thus make the elementalist profession more popular.

Expected effect for secondary profession usage

 * The inverted scaling of the regular attunements allows secondary profession elementalists to use attunements the same as before without making them imbalanced for primary elementalists. The only change secondary elementalists will notice is that their attunement lasts a few second shorter. However, it keeps an uptime of 100%.

Expected effect on the performance of NPCs

 * Long-term energy denial against elementalist foes will be harder. However, it is not a common strategy to try winning against elementalist NPCs by means of energy denial, as they have extremely large energy pools (roughly 145 energy in hard mode) and will die in most cases before energy denial could have any effect. This statement is even true for elementalist bosses like Forgewight and Magmus.
 * Short-term energy denial against elementalist foes will be largely unaffected. Interruption still denies any return of energy, [[Guilt], [[Energy Surge] and other immediate energy denial skills remain as effective as before. People who wish to play burst energy denial team builds and finish off targets with [[Aneurysm] should not notice a difference.
 * Damage output: Foes with an attunement will deal slightly more damage in normal mode. In hard mode there won't be an effect in many cases, as it is very common that hostile NPCs will already have the maximum attribute level of 20. Skills can't increase attributes beyond this cap, so there won't be an increase in difficulty in hard mode midgame and endgame content.
 * All elementalist henchmen and many elementalist allies will deal slightly more damage. It is unusual that their base attribute level of an elemental attribute line is at 20. For example, all PvE henchmen have a maximum base attribut level of 12.
 * Due to their better energy management and bar compression elementalist heroes should become a more popular damage dealing alternative to mesmers and necromancers. Right now damage elementalists are rarely ever brought despite their damage output can be competitive.

Additional Notes

 * The dervish rework made the dervish profession less interesting for secondary profession usage. The suggested tweaks aim at leaving elementalist secondary profession usage mostly untouched to maintain maximum build diversity. See: Expected effect for secondary profession usage
 * It is intended that the proposed PvE-only energy storage does not reduce the skill activation cost (which is how the primary attributes expertise and mysticism work). This keeps elementalists more distinct from other professions and preserves the characteristics from the last decade's attunement based gameplay, including the role of [[Glyph of Lesser Energy] as a net energy gain and elementalists being the profession most vulnerable to interruption.
 * Attunements can still be used to slightly ease one's energy management, but at higher energy storage levels they'll only be as effective as [[Aura of Restoration] or [[Elemental Lord] at doing so. This allows to chose between (a) energy and healing (aura of restoration), (b) energy, minor healing and a minor attribute boost (elemental lord) and (c) energy and a medium attribute boost (attunement) or any combination of these.

Current Skill Functionalities
Note: The energy return by regular attunements is first merged and then rounded to even. This is why it produces different results compared to combining [[Aura of Restoration] with [[Master of Magic].

Note: Regular attunements and [[Elemental Attunement] return energy on all skills of the element attribute lines. [[Aura of Restoration], [[Elemental Lord] and [[Master of Magic] only return energy on spells.

Suggested Functionalities
For a comparison of pre-change attunement vs. post-change attunement + post-change energy storage, refer to this table. Green items mean an advantage of post-change attunement vs. pre-change attunement, red items mean a disadvantage.

Reminder: The original attunements restore 2/4/6/8 energy regardless of attribute levels.

Note: As the new attunements will scale off energy storage you'll have to add the energy return from energy storage to receive the actual resulting energy return. This is done in a different table.

Reminder: The original attunements restore 2/4/6/8 energy regardless of attribute levels.

This table shows that there are some deviations compared to the original skill behaviour. Skills with a base cost of 5 start to return more energy starting with attribute rank 4. Skills with a base cost of 15 alternate between giving the same or one less point of energy until you hit 11 energy storage. Skills with a base cost of 25 alternate between giving the same or one additional point of energy until you hit 9 energy storage. In case of all base costs you will start to receive more energy than with the current skill functionalities once you exceed 12 energy storage. This will only have an effect on single element builds that do not invest into a secondary profession, as players and heroes will otherwise stay below that rank in energy storage.

If this scaling isn't easily achieved by standard functionalities, mimic elemental lord's x return per y ranks mechanic and increase the attribute by one point per 6 or 7 ranks in energy storage.

Meta Notes

 * Elementalists are mostly fine as they are right now and large parts of their lacking popularity stem from other professions being overpowered. But if the suggested change was carried out, they'd definitely be less annoying to play without inevitably overpowering them as a side effect.
 * At the current state of the game's balancing I disapprove of buffs, including the one suggested on this page. Nerfs to the overpowered abilities in the game should have priority. It wouldn't take a lot of nerfs to shake up the meta and increase build diversity. This is due to a large amount of viable builds that aren't quite competitive. This page is just an exercise in trying to buff a profession in a way that increases its attractivity without screwing the entire balancing over or reducing build diversity in any way. The small amount of skill changes (= work to do for developers; localization costs) is a bonus.
 * I checked all NPC skill bars that include an attunement. All of them will still work fine with the changed skill functionality. Only PvP NPCs should be updated.