Feedback:User/Aquadrizzt/Skill rebalance/Primary Attributes

Skill rebalance/Primary Attributes
User	Aquadrizzt
Categories	Skill feedback → Common

This suggestion is part of my overarching skill rebalance project.

Explanation

As professions are revamped, the power of some primary attributes has begun to outshine others; some primary attribute bonuses provide one benefit, some two, and some a lot more. This my attempt at rectifying that.

Primary Attributes

	Attribute	PvX Bonus	"In PvE..." bonus
	Strength	Martial attacks get 1% armor penetration per rank.	While under the effects of a weapon style or stance, you get +10 maximum health per rank.
	Expertise	Reduces energy cost of attack skills, stances, traps and preparations by 4% per rank.	??
	Divine Favor	Heal allies for 2 per rank and damage foes for 2 holy damage per rank whenever you cast a spell targeting them.	??
	Soul Reaping	Gain 1 energy per rank whenever a creature dies within earshot. (Can only trigger 3 times per 15 seconds.)	??
	Fast Casting	Decrease the activation time of your spells and signets by 4% per rank. (Cannot reduce activation times of non-Mesmer skills below 1 second.)	Decreases recharge time for your signets and Mesmer spells by 3% per rank.
	Energy Storage	Gain +3 maximum energy per rank.	??
	Critical Strikes	Increases critical hit rate by 1% per rank and you gain 1 energy per 4 ranks whenever you critical hit.	Your ways and stances last 3% longer per rank.
	Spawning Power	Creatures you create have 4% more health and +1 armor per rank. Weapon and item spells last 4% longer per rank.	Whenever you create a creature, nearby allies are healed for 3 per rank. (Can only heal up to 50 per 10 seconds.)
	Leadership	Gain 1 energy for every ally affected by your chants or shouts up to a maximum of 1 energy per rank.	Allies are healed 1 per rank every time they are affected by your chants or shouts. (Can only heal up to 50 per 10 seconds.)
	Mysticism	Reduces the energy cost of enchantments and auras by 4% per rank	Whenever an enchantment or aura starts or ends on you, you are healed 5 per rank and gain 1 energy per rank. (Can only activate once every 15 seconds.)

Explanation

This suggestion is my attempt at rebalancing primary attributes while also reinforcing profession roles and designs. I have removed profession-skill exclusive bonuses (except for Mesmer's FC, where non-profession skills can now get scaled down to 1 second). The PvX aspects of these new attributes is to provide a universal advantage that, while playing off of the strengths of the individual profession also allows for interesting synergy with various secondaries.

Warrior

Now, instead of just attack skills getting the tiny bonus to damage, all martial skills will receive a small bonus to damage in the form of armor penetration. This means that a warrior will typically do a couple more damage with atacks than the other martial professions. In PvE, I wanted to reinforce the idea that warriors are tanks, and therefore stole DMR's idea of a health boost per rank, which also fits in with the more survival-aspect of the Strength line.

Ranger

Everyone hates the gimmickyness of vanilla Expertise. Ranger skills and Expetise have this paradox aspect that the game developers never seemed to escape. Expertise drastically reduces energy cost, so to balance it all of the skills need to have high energy costs. But now the skills have high energy costs, so you need to mitigate that with a high rank in Expertise. The result is that the vanilla ranger profession is still broken but now its also virtually unusable as a secondary. The new expertise affects only select skills useful to various martials (attacks, stances and preparations being big ones; traps are included to give a small but not overpowering benefit to trappers). Thus a R/W might not have as much armor as a W/R, but it can benefit from reduced energy cost for its attack skills, while both the R/W and the W/R can use ranger skills effectively.

Monk

Now there is an incentive to be a non-healer/non-prot Monk primary (other than RoJ in JQ). As many professions have spells that target other allies or foes, there is now a small bonus to using spells on other targets. Heals will be slightly stronger and targeted damage will be slightly stronger, which is a tradeoff for not having another spell boosting primary.

Necromancer

Soul Reaping is already on par with other primaries as I used it as a basis for the power of other primaries.

Mesmer

Fast Casting has been relatively unchanged in terms of the effects it has on mesmers, but I have improved its ability to interact with skills from other professions. Now, any secondary profession skill that naturally has an activation time of longer than 1 will get scaled down until it reaches 1 second.

Elementalist

Energy Storage is one of the already good caster attributes and I decided to not mess with its effect too much.

Assassin

Another relatively unchanged effect (you now will get slightly more energy at highly boosted levels of critical strikes, but not generally noticeable.)

Ritualist

Scaled up to make creatures not only bigger in health but more protected (to encourage MM/ranger spirit crossovers). Exptended weapon spells ability to item spells as well (you are spawning ghostly weapons/ashes anyway).

Paragon

In PvX still plays the same but a bigger energy font from chants and shouts. In PvE it also adds an element of partywide healing, and that could yield some interseting P/Mo hybrid healers.

Dervish

In order to eliminate profession-specificity, it now affects all enchantments and auras (new skill type that replaces maintained enchantments). Again, the point of this was to encourage creative use (i.e. D/Mo prots).

tl;dr

Martials

• Warriors do more damage.
• Rangers have lower energy costs for attack skills and stances.
• Assassins have higher critical rate.
• Paragons gain energy from affecting allies.
• Dervishes have lower energy costs for enchantments.

Spellcasters

• Monks heal for a bit more and damage for a bit more on targeted spells.
• Mesmers cast spells faster.
• Necromancers get energy upon deaths.
• Elementalists get a high maximum energy.
• Ritualists create much stronger creatures.