Theorycrafting a “Style Gauge” for POE2

Looking at Cast on X, and Invocations...

Probably best to at least start with the brute-force solution of "Skills socketed into Cast on X or Invocations have their Style gains set to 0".

This puts Cast on X skills and Invocations squarely in the realm of dealing damage and/or proccing Ailments.

Probably as an added measure, Skills socketed into Cast on X / Invocations do not count towards the RUPs for those skills.

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"Cast on X" is an interesting thing to look at because it's pretty out of your control - it instantly activates as soon as you build up enough Energy for it.

If you're focusing on building up Style, it could sabotage you to some degree by either killing some Monsters too early, or reduce its health enough that you won't be able to reap as much Style as you could've.

Most practical way to add one of those to your Skill list is to keep it confined to only one of your two Weapon Sets, so as to keep it out of your way until the time comes for a big heavy-hitting finish.

Invocations are more in your control because you have to manually activate the Invocation yourself, so an Invocation can be allocated to both Weapon Sets.

Invocations have their own thing to think about, with the "Ritual Cadence" Keystone.

Not allocating it lets you unleash the whole Invocation in one massive burst, but the Keystone spreads its auto-casts out over a period of time, during which you now have to act a little faster in building Style and staying afloat because of the auto-casts going on.

And as far as I know, a "Ritual Cadence" Invocation cannot be interrupted once it's started.

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Probably to avoid that added pressure, players would try to mod Cast on X / Invocations to minimize damage, and boost chance to proc Ailments.
I don't think "zero damage, 100% chance / perfect buildup of Ailments" is actually possible in practice with POE2's systems, but let's imagine it as an extreme case to address.

Proccing ailments has the purpose of executing Payoffs to gain Style, or using Freeze/Electrocute/Pin/Heavy-Stun to immobilize enemies so as to gain Style without being interrupted.

The Skills' RUPs will be important to keep that from being a cheesing strategy.
That and the fact that in the case of high pack size, even if you incapacitate one pack of monsters, other packs approaching you will be able to rush in to get in your way of building Style.

Small thing I realized, relating to POE2's controls.
Focusing on keyboard at least, there are only 13 bind slots to actually allocate Skills to.
Meanwhile the gamepad UI gives you either: 12 bind slots, if you don't use the "hold to switch to secondary bind set" action; or 22 if you DO use that action. Sure, a few will be allocated for things like the Portal + Flasks, but that still leaves 19 available.
Down the line, maybe Keyboard gets its own "switch between bind sets" action to expand the number of bind slots to 26; or 23.

But if the concern is about there not being enough bind slots even if you have a lot of Skills equipped, there's one idea I have.
While the Devil May Cry games use a binary repetitive usage penalty (RUP), there are some Skills where it perhaps wouldn't fit too well.
Instead of being binary, it could be a multiplier based on how many times you use the skill or skill component while its RUP is active.
1st time, the Style gain is x0.5; 2nd time, the Style gain is x0.25; 3rd time, the Style gain is x0.125; 4th time onward, the Style gain is 0.
Each skill component may have this curve adjusted - i.e. how many times it lasts before it gets cut down to zero.

This does remind me, the RUPs on projectile shots are an interesting thing, even in the Devil May Cry games.
I'll have to look into that more.

Got to really think about how to make the Style Gauge a challenge even with Party Play, or Couch Co-op.

Especially with the bonuses that Party Play provides.
And also how loot is allocated.

Focusing on Couch Co-op first as a base case...
And also the edge case of people doing "1 player, 2 controllers" setups...

The two players each get their own Style Gauge.
Got to prevent a situation where one side does all the work, and the other can just piggyback off of the first player with kills to get bonus-boosted drops.

Though need to also think about the "Unique Drop gauge on Unique Monsters" idea...

Thinking one step above the ground level of combat itself...

DMC3+5 does the thing where the end of each level gives you a grade based on your Style points.
(DMC3 grades you on other things such as time taken, damage taken, and items used; while DMC5 grades purely based on combat style points).
Though it's averaged based on the Style points you gained within each of the Style ranks.
Earning many points in the lower Style ranks pulls down your average, higher ranks pulls up your average.

This does mean that in those games, if you want to keep your level-wide Style Rank high, you need to skip as many optional fights as possible.
And also rely on techniques that get your Style rank high as quickly as possible (e.g. from the very bottom to the top of SSS), to maximize how much time you spend in the high ranks, proportionally.

One place I think it would make sense to use that is the Ascendancy Trial rooms, because those are small and each one has a clear goal.
As for endgame maps... eh, I dunno.