Halves Energy Cost 20%

I thought of this last night, maybe someone has suggested it before but I'm too lazy to check :P

What about an upgrade for staves that has a 20% chance to halve the energy cost of spells?

*Shrug* It'd not be as useful as the other ones, so I doubt it'd see alot of use.

/signed for originality though.

Sweet I love it!!

/signed

hmmm passive e-manegement not usefull ?

lolz

& make it 40%half cast ; 40the energy thingie ;

phan, it's useful incase you have no e-management, but i'd still take HCT/HRC in pvp.

/unsigned
Game needs less luck and m0ar explosions
/signed for Explosions though

Spiffy idea, but wondering about balance.

You'd could get away with it in PvE methinks, but prolly not PvP.

/signed

Sounds like an interesting idea to me.

Few problems I see.

1) 25 energy spells, 15 energy spells, and 5 energy spells. What do you get for 1/2 energy cost on them? Round up or down? How does it sync with skills like Glyph of Lesser Energy, Attuned Was Songkai, etc.?

2) Necro has skills that were reduced to 1 energy. Do these stay at 1 energy, or get reduced to 0 energy? The reason they were reduced to 1 energy is the true cost of the skill is life sacrifice. Does this mean a skill like Offering of Blood becomes a life sacrifice of 10%?

3) Attunements for the Elementalist provide energy based on the cost of the skill you use. So if they use Elemental Attunement, and get 50% back, Fireball would provide them with 5 energy in return. Would your 1/2 energy cost make the spell cost 5 energy, and still provide 5 energy back, or would it only provide 2.5 energy back?

4) Mind Blast, at 14 Fire Magic provides 8 energy, a net gain of 3. If they get half cost, they would spend 2.5 energy to cast and get 8 energy in return, a net gain of 5-6 (depending on how it is rounded).

/unsigned

This screams imbalanced to me.

and halves adrenaline cost too?
backbreaker goes 5adrenaline then
/notsigned
some spells can turn out overpowered

MagmaRed, please think before answering.
It would be 20% of the times. 20% can be put as 'once every 5 times'.

Most expensive skills cost is 25E.
So, in average, 4 skills won't be affected and the fifth will cost half.
Half of 25 is 12.5.
GW calculations round up numbers when it's 'bad for the user'. So 12.5 would be 13.
That makes 5 skills that would cost 125 E into 113E. You'd save up 12 Energy every 5 skills for 25 energy skills.
For 1E skills, this won't work. 0.5 would turn into 1.
For 5E skills, it would be 2 Energy every 5 skills.
For 10E skills, it would be 5 Energy every 5 skills.
And for 15E skills, it would be 7 energy every 5 skills.

So it can be perfectly done. It won't be unbalancing at all.
It won't be even if it was one third, or even a quarter.
It could even be 'no energy cost' and won't be much trouble.
I see '20% half casting' mods more efficient.

It won't affect adrenaline skills. N1ghtstalker, don't mix things that has nothing to do with each other. You don't get bonus energy with bonus adrenaline mods, do you? No, they are different and unrelated things.

Problem: if I had 13 energy, with this couldn't i just spam a 25 energy spell until I hit a half energy cast? The other 80% of the time I would try to cast it I wouldn't be able to, then when I hit the 20% chance I would save 12-13 energy. This would be easily abused to give 100% half energy cost on all spells (well maybe not 5e spells, but definitely on the others).

Cost reductions have an order of operations, usually based on the order the effects go into play. Item-based reductions would probably either be the very first, or the very last.

Energy cost reduction is energy cost reduction. The cost of the skill would 0, I think, due to the way the game rounds. Could be off, though. I did much of the early calculations and experimentation regarding interactions of increased and reduced costs, which is buried somewhere in Community Works - but it's been ages, and they all date pre-Factions.


Attunements work off the base, regardless of adjusted costs. 10 cost spell only returns 5 energy from elemental attunement, even if Quickening Zephyr is up, and still returns 13 energy when Energizing Wind is up.

1/5th the time.
Net gain of 3 four times = 12
Net gain of 6 one time = 6
Total gain in five casts = 18
Average Net Gain = 3.6
Average E Management = 2.7 pips of energy regeneration
(Normal would be 2.25)

Not a big problem in and of itself.


Seconded. The Mind Blast example as an isolated spell is not really the problem.
The problem is that the net energy effect is incredibly strong as a whole. .45 more pips of energy is just from casting ONE skill. (Mind you, this specific interaction is generally only the case for skills that provide a set rebate.)
I don't have a baseline "spells cast on average over a period of time" to work out the numbers, but I believe the mod would effectively work out to be the equivalent of an extra non-elite e-management skill on your bar.


It's a little unpredictable to base your actual management of energy on, and though that could be considered a balancing factor, considering how important managing energy is to characters in Guild Wars, I'd actually count that as a strike against it. It gives a bad kind of randomness to the game.


It's an interesting idea, though. Simple and elegant.

I don't see with this being put in game, especially for PvE. The only arguments on this thread for being against it are incorrect due to lack of understanding how the mod would work. The 20% of the time makes it balanced, so it would work. I /sign for this idea, even though I'd probably never use it myself.

How would this work if have, let's say, 5 energy and the spell u want to cast costs 10 energy. Do u just keep bashing the buttom and hope you get the 20% chance?

Too bad u cant use backbreaker while weelding a staff.

This would have to work so that it involves using the skill at the right amount of energy, and then on usage with the luck of the mod, only half the energy would be used. That would prevent spamming of the skill for half energy, as that would pretty much allow 100% chance for any spell.

Creative idea. /signed

whaaaa?

Can anyone make any sense of this?

You'd cancel a 25 e spell losing 25 e each time until you got the half energy? It doesnt work like that. LOok at how attunements work. Youi dont cast something when you dont have enough energy.... you still need the skill cost.

Good original idea though :P

If you don't have the 25 e to cast the 25 e spell, and keep spamming it, you lose nothing. Eventually, you'll get the half cost from button mashing the skill while staying on a low energy set.

But that's easily repaired by requiring you to have the full cost of the spell before you can cast to try and reduce by half, or by just granting back half the cost after successful casting.

ive seen this idea since the game came out... they have yet to introduce it, though.

i dont think it would be overpowered (as long as it is not able to 40% proc), which would mean choosing between a staff with 20% ench or 20% chance of half energy. personally, as a monk, i would go with ench. this mod would really only help elementalists, necros, and mesmers who actually have high energy spells to use, and mesmers and necros already get awesome energy management.

however, compare it to GoLE's energy returns. it gives back on average 25e every 30 seconds. if spamming [lightning hammer] and [lightning orb], and it procs once every 5 spells (for simplicity's sake were going to say the spells are on a cycle of 6 seconds) that would mean 1 spell procs the mod. that would mean either 13e back or 7e back, which is no where near a decent e-management skill. granted a mod does not take up a skill slot, i still do not see any major impact from it in game.

most of the arguments against adding the mod in are quite silly, using common sense and the patterns already in the game you can deduce what will happen. of course you cant spam a 25e skill with 13e until it procs, as said before you cant cast an attuned fireball with 5e... etc.

however, a more interesting idea imo would be to return the energy after the casted spell, which would make it more susceptible to interrupts etc, and probably easier to code into the game, think of it as a mini attunement that only procs a fifth of the time (which might warrant a higher % chance to proc due to easy interrupts etc.)

edit: thinking about spamming a 5e spell like flare (because of instant recharge it is a good example), you could get ~15 casts in 30 secs. that would mean 3 procs to a whopping 9e return (rounded up). the only thing that sounds scary with a mod like this would be an SF spam, about 10 every 30 secs, which would be only 14e. pretty meh.

Depends on how it triggers.

Effects like Fire Atunement force you to have the energy in the first place, so it might work better if it was 20% of the time, you gain half the cost of spell cast back, as it would prevent the problem you're mentioning above (which is the only abuse of it I can see at the moment.

This is my thought exactly

It would provide an alternative to 20% Ench, make staves a little more attractive to players who would rather have the extra energy and mods of a Wand/Focus. 20% makes it too random to be counted on as exclusive energy management, but nice for a long battle.

An alternative would be -1 E casting cost on X attribute of the staff, but that sounds a bit more overpowered (particularly on spamable 5E skills or in conjunction with fast casting and/or HB)

The game doesn't handle normal energy costs properly 100% of the time now, so I don't see why we should make it even more complicated. Maybe if they fix the can't-cast-even-when-you-have-enough-energy, then we can talk.

That's a server synch issue, not an actual issue with how energy is handled by the game. It's simply displayed wrong on your end (you can check with a command, not sure what it is, but it will show you your actual energy)

It would GIVE BACK 1/2 the cost. So to cast a 25e spell you still NEED 25e but if the 20% chance applied you would get a little +13e pop-up.

Sorry Shadows I was replying to TheMeth


BTW I think this would be a HUGE buff to mesmers.. They already have inherent fast casting so the 20% fct really isn't needed on them so if they went 20% HEC, 20% HSR. WOW.

or you could just use [power drain]

also the 20% chance to halve energy would not replace a 20% HCT unless there is an 'of adeptness' mod i dont know about

after thinking about this more, the mod sounds very useful on heroes who use skills poorly and often. other than that im not sure how it would compare to 20% ench or even +30 health.

the real issue with the mod is is it worth it? in other words, what is more likely: you getting spiked in HA or you running out of energy in HA? (i would hope for all of you it would be #1). the real reason players use a staff now is for the 40% HCT and 20% ench on the same weap. this mod, i would assume, would not work for weapons other than a staff really... if it worked for a martial weapon then you coul dhave passive +AL from a shield and passive e-management... anyways, the mod is dependent on if you cast spells often enough that it will actually make a difference in how many spells you can cast

Cool, I love the idea, because more variety is good and the item system in GW is terribly boring. But here come the power level issues - this thing is VERY powerful, there isn't any weapon mod anywhere close to this thing in its potency.

For balancing reasons I suggest this type of mod to appear only on Staffs, alternatively to the inherent HSR mod. So you could never get 2 of this stack in any way, because 40% would be overpowered even in PvE. And so you can't combine it with half recharge mods for even more e-management, getting half recharge on a e-management skill is a big thing (and skilled players will swap sets anyway). It should not be a wrapping, or 20/20/20/20 staff would be just too efficient casting set.

Still it feels imba for PvP. Think about it - 20% chance for half cost means that on average all your spells are 10% cheaper! Instead of spending 50 energy you spend only 45! Now think about serious PvP, like a GvG match where tight fights can last even 20 minutes. This kind of energy management coming from an item would be HUGE.

I would change the way this mod work to something like a random mini attunement:

"Gain 20% of casted spell's energy cost (20% chance)"

This would make it on the level of other mods and would feel balanced. 20% of spell's energy means that you will get:
1 energy for a 5 ene spell
2 energy for a 10 ene spell
3 energy for a 15 ene spell
5 energy for a 25 ene spell
Every time this effect will trigger you WILL feel it, it's still a very powerful effect.

Example of a nice staff a typical WoH monk (using enchantments) would love:


so /signed but only after power level nerf

/not signed.
lrn2e-manage.

There are better things to put on weapons & inscription slots.