New Skill Type Concepts

I've recently thought up a new idea for skills. I think that Maintained Offensive Spells would be a good addition to the already diverse and interesting collection of skills that this game has. Players could choose to use these skills at the cost of heavy energy degeneration (-5 to -8) to deal constant damage to foes and cause conditions/slowdown. I've used the Elementalist as an example for some possible skills:

Fire Magic: Searing Beam. Elite maintained spell. Fire a searing beam at target foe. As long as you maintain this spell and target foe is within range, cause burning on target foe and deal 3...18 fire damage per second.

Earth Magic: Sand Storm. Elite maintained spell. Create a sand storm at target foe's location. As long as you maintain this spell, foes in the area are blinded and take 6...27 earth damage each second.

Air Magic: Lightning Cloud. Elite maintained spell. Create a lightning cloud at target foe's location. As long as you maintain this spell, foes in the area are struck for 10...47 lightning damage each second. This spell has 25% armor penetration.

Water Magic: Blizzard. Elite maintained spell. Create a blizzard at target foe's location. As long as you maintain this spell, foes in the area move 15...75% slower and take 7...25 cold damage each second.

I think these types of skills would be interesting to add into the game. I don't believe they should cause exhaustion, because that would be too heavy a price to pay for them, and I'm not sure how much energy they should initially cost to cast. They'd also look really cool.

Thoughts? Comments?

I like it!

Interesting concepts...though this would all have to be PBAoE...as there isn't a way to target an area.

The effects are insane dude...they'll probably be either elites or expensive :P. My two cents.

I don't!

Doesnt seem useful. They just seem like long lasting hexes.

>.> overpowered!

maintain 1 spell cost 1 energy regen. That's 1/3 energy per second. For 3 seconds, you'll do over 50 damage for just 1 energy.

Isn't that overpowered?

Read it again, he say -5 to -8 energy degen, which is 125% to 200% energy degen on yourself.

[QUOTET=Reserved Egotist]he effects are insane dude...they'll probably be either elites or expensive :P. My two cents.[/QUOTE]

Also look again. Under each skill description he says "Elite Maintained spell" meaning that they are Elite spells.

Interesting Idea, with negative energy regen maybe it wouldn't be so unablanced. I like the -8 degen idea.

Yeah, these types of spells would have to have huge energy degeneration, because you have to LOSE energy while performing them, or casters could just constantly perform these with little consequence.

I think being able to maintain a condition on the battlefield would be very helpful in some circumstances. Monks can easily remove conditions with little effort, so that should be counterable with maintainable AoE conditions. This also would promote movement on the battlefield, because I find too often the battle starts in one place and just does not move.

Other ideas I might add to maintained offensive skills could be a maximum time limit, like 30 seconds or something, or the fact that if you're using one of these skills, all your other skills are disabled, so you can't cast other spells while maintaining one (you shouldn't be able to do that anyways). These skills would also be interruptable, like any other skill.

Anyways, that's my two cents on what I'd like to see added to GW. Keep going ANet, you're doing the right thing by constantly changing things and listening to the community.

How about for a Necro add the abilty to Vengence-Like Rez...
Raise the Dead (25 energy, 3 sec cast, 15 second recharge) - Reanimate nearest fallen ally in the area with an unexploited corpse full Health and Energy, Counts as a minion and is subject to minion related degen/spells Death leaves and exloited corpse and will not suffer from additional DP when dies as a minion(50% failure Death Magic 4 or Below)

looks pretty cool, a good build can probably be created with them