For the first 2 years of Genshin, Scaramouche was thought to be electro. His change to an anemo unit that can fly around was a sudden surprise (perhaps serendipity as it greatly increases his usefulness in exploration).
But what if Scaramouche were an electro catalyst instead of anemo? Perhaps the ability to fly resonates better with anemo, but suppose all aspects of Scaramouche's kit remain the same, except all his attacks are now electro.
As an electro catalyst, he would be competing with Yae and Lisa. As an electro dps, he would be competing with Raiden, Yae, etc. Maybe being electro makes sense lore-wise given that Scaramouche refers to Raiden as his 'mother'. But being an electro catalyst would perhaps make Scaramouche less unique. As of version 3, the only other anemo catalyst is Sucrose.
But being electro does allow him to do quicken and hyperbloom more readily. Technically, anemo Scaramouche can proc quicken and hyperbloom by swirling electro in an anemo dendro taser team. But an electro Scaramouche can directly aggravate or hyperbloom without having to swirl electro.
For aggravate, switching Scaramouche to electro would not increase his dps by much given his NA/CA have high scalings (so the additive bonus from quicken hits diminishing returns). In this case it would make sense to break the scaling into smaller parts, so that he can proc aggravate more often. It would also make sense to change the E buff from a damage multiplier to dmg bonus. And to complete the kit, giving him some EM scaling or EM buff would make him more suitable for quicken/hyperbloom (similar to how Yae gets EM scaling on her E).
Interestingly, an electro Scaramouche would benefit from C6 too as it gives an extra instance of damage to NA, which allows for more aggravates.
An electro Scaramouche would probably work best in quickbloom teams and work well with the usual suspects (Nahida, Yelan, etc.). Being electro instead of anemo, he may no longer fit as neatly in some reaction teams (such as freeze), but the change to electro may not affect his teams too much. He could work as a hyperbloom driver that applies electro very fast to proc many hyperbloom reactions. His selling point would be that he has to proc hyperblooms faster than Raiden (E hits every .9s), Kuki (C4), Yae, and other electro units. An electro Scaramouche would also probably powercreep keqing as a quickswap electro dps (E dps, not Q dps).
But an electro Scaramouche would put him in more direct competition with another electro dps that applies electro fast: Cyno. Cyno's electro app is quite fast, he has natural EM buffs and scalings, and he can also drive quickbloom while having high scalings. So it would almost be redundant to have both an electro Scaramouche and electro Cyno (not that Genshin is opposed to redundancy: e.g. Yelan/XQ). But a follow-up question to this is: what if Cyno were not electro?
First, Cyno was probably a polearm user since day 1 given the appearance in the travail trailer. And given his outfit is purple, electro does make some sense for him. In Genshin, the color palette of a character's outfit usually matches their element, with not too many exceptions. Even Scaramouche's outfit color was changed to adapt to the anemo element.
Nonetheless, there used to be speculations that Cyno was a different element, perhaps most interestingly dendro. Suppose Cyno was a dendro polearm and kept all other aspects of his kit. Then for spread, dendro Cyno would want an electro partner. He would then actually work well with Raiden. He would still work well with Yae and Kuki. And perhaps for pure spread teams, Cyno may be able to do a bit more dps (given spread has a higher RC than aggravate for same EM).
However, his role would change for bloom/hyperbloom teams. Instead of being the one proccing hyperbloom, a dendro Cyno would be creating lots of dendro cores, enabling an off-field electro unit such as full EM Raiden, Kuki, or Yae to proc hyperbloom. In this case, a dendro Cyno would be very similar to Childe as an on-field reaction enabler.
So while a dendro Cyno may be able to do more dps in pure-spread, he would not be doing as much dps for hyperbloom. This is due to the asymmetry of hyperbloom: the electro unit is the one that procs hyperbloom and whose EM is factored into the calculation. So in this sense, electro is a more offensive element than dendro. While it can spread, dendro is more supportive for creating bloom cores. And being electro actually allows Cyno to achieve much higher dps levels by owning the hyperbloom reaction dps than if he were dendro (in which case none of the hyperbloom damage is attributed to him, but the electro unit).
While the idea of a dendro Xiao proccing quickbloom and doing green dustbolt nukes sounds cool, a follow-up question would be: but then wouldn't a dendro Cyno overlap with Alhaitham? Both a dendro Cyno and Alhaitham would fulfill a similar role, as a dendro dps/reaction enabler, applying dendro really fast. The difference is that Cyno is burst dependent whereas Alhaitham is E dependent.
But the bigger point is that Nahida and Alhaitham already apply dendro quite fast with their E (not needing energy), so for a dendro Cyno to need 80 energy to deal dendro dps, he must have much higher scalings to compensate for that energy cost. But Nahida and Alhaitham already have very high scalings to begin with. So in conclusion, while dendro Cyno would look cool, Alhaitham and Nahida already exist, so Cyno is actually better off electro.
But then why not change the element of Nahida or Alhaitham? No. Nahida and Alhaitham are fine as they are. It is best they stay dendro.
We already have a dendro dps that is dependent on their burst: kaveh. Kaveh's burst costs 80 energy and gives 100 em (like Cyno's burst). So kaveh's playstyle gives some idea of what a dendro Cyno may feel like. Of course, kaveh has other passives involving bloom damage, but hyperbloom has higher scalings than pure bloom. But the point is, if Cyno were dendro, the hyperbloom damage would no longer belong to him, but the electro unit.
To synergize with the dendro element of Sumeru, it would make sense for him to be electro or dendro. For hydro, Childe already exists, so a hydro Cyno would not be too unique. Being electro actually gives Cyno a higher dps potential in reaction teams as he can then proc hyperblooms. If he were dendro like Alhaitham or Nahida, he would be more like a support/enabler. So perhaps it is predestined for Cyno to be an electro polearm dps. As an electro polearm, Cyno sometimes has to live in Raiden's shadow, even if Cyno's personal damage is higher.
But the conclusion is that being a different element may not necessarily make Cyno better. For dendro reactions specifically, electro is already one of the most offensive elements because of hyperbloom. And it just makes cultural sense for Cyno to synergize with the dendro archon Nahida.
In other words, what if his delusion form were playable? In his delusion form he can be seen applying an electro riptide mark. He also has the foul legacy cyclops form (used in the Golden House and Court of Fontaine), but we will not discuss this for now.
Suppose for simplicity Childe's entire kit is the same except all his attacks are now electro. Would this change his 'stance in the meta'? First, one thing will not change: the quadratic scaling on his riptide. That will still be there and is independent of element. So in this sense, his value in the meta will not change.
However switching from hydro to electro does affect his reactions. As hydro, he could enable reactions like vape for XL. But if he is electro, he would be like Cyno, applying electro very fast. This could actually increase Childe's own dps as then he can be driving many quicken/hyperbloom reactions (pair with Nahida, Yelan, etc.). So the analysis would be similar as the case if Scaramouche were electro.
So an electro Childe could actually be an upgrade from a hydro Childe. As Childe applies his element very fast with riptide, he is not usually the one vaping. However, this actually makes electro Childe better as he can get more procs of quicken or hyperbloom.
So this is a counterexample to the hydro chauvinist's claim that hydro is a superior element. Hydro still needs electro/dendro for hyperbloom, pyro for vape, anemo for vv shred, and cryo for freeze. Hydro as an element does not exist in a vacuum. Its strength depends on the strength of other elements. By contrast, anemo has more innate abilities like cc, vv, exploration.