12 Apr 2006 at 02:19 - 21
City of Heroes runs something similar. All characters can use a 'rest' skill that gives you a fairly quick recovery, but if you get smacked while using it, it HURTS. It's made for out-of-battle recovery, so that you don't have to wait around so long after finishing a fight just regenerating.
Usually, health isn't an issue for characters. Natural regeneration will take you up to full by the time you run into the next encounter. But Elementalists and Exhaustion, or recovering a full bar (if you're using Attunements, rather than Ether Prodigy, and you run out - Attunements are much better in PvE for managing the energy you have, but they don't help in recovering. Perhaps more importantly, they don't cause exhaustion <_<), is a whole other story.
Usually, it's not a huge issue, but it can be a nuisance. If you accumulate something like 60 exhaustion when the battle's over, you'll have to wait 3 minutes before it's restored fully, enough time to get over to the next monsters easily. Partying with other players, this is a no-no, as most people are unhappy with having to stand around waiting on a single party member.
Most elementalists just reduce exhausting skills, party with hench ot friends, or live with the ridicule you face from your party members as they stand around doing nothing on your account.
It'd be a nice feature if you could recover out of battle faster, but I'm not quite sure how it'd be implemented. You don't have a skill slot limit in City of Heroes.
Maybe a piece of equipment you can equip that accellerates your health and energy regeneration, and exhaustion recovery rate, that causes you to take additional damage like Monk equipment? Unfortunately, what with Protective Spirit, I think that such a thing would simply result in a new branch of E/Mo farmers.
If they were consumable items, it'd be a nuisance to carry them around and use them like potions from a standard RPG, which GW attempts to distance itself from. It'd work like Salvage kits, were that the case though, I'm sure.
The most feasible approach seems to be it not happening at all. Many potential problems, and it's not that pressing. Nobody cares about Elementalists, after all, anyway <_<
I brought this up elsewhere, but one of the nuisances in PvP is that while every other profession recovers fully in The Crag (lava arena), Elementalists are the only ones gimped by the exhaustion they had pre-death. Oh what fun.
Anyway, those're my 2 cents.