Anet, your templating...

...could use a bit of work. Okay, a lot. Factions has only compounded this problem. Now I cannot honestly be the only person concerned about this--especially when I see so many threads "what does this skill do? the description is confusing." A problem easily solved with proper templating--just look at M:tG.

For those who don't know what I'm talking about, I'll provide a couple examples.

Let's look at Crystal Wave.

Cured? Negative Conditions? On no other skill will it say "cured" or describe Conditions as "negative"--are there any positive ones? To contrast, we'll look at another skill that removes Conditions. Mend Ailment.

There. Remove. Not "cure", and it's just "Condition". Though the Condition list leaves out Burning and Weakness for some reason. And why even list the Conditions at all? Why have the list on a few condition removal skills, but not all (Extinguish and Draw Conditions don't have them, for example)?

Another problem with Crystal Wave--the damage ignores armor, but the skill doesn't list it as such, as it does with Obsidian Flame. Why the inconsistency?

Crystal Wave, properly templated, would read as follows.

Admittedly, this is an awkward skill to write out, as it has a unique effect--doing something both positive and negative to the enemy--but key differences are the addition that the damage ignores armor and the use of "remove" rather than "cured".

One more example.

Let's take a look at Rotting Flesh.

Why all the unneeded description? For contrast, we'll see another skill that does nothing more than inflict a Condition.

There. Simple, straight, to the point--there can be no confusion about what Enfeeble does. It causes Weakness. That's it.

Rotting Flesh, properly templated, would read as follows.

Now if I'm honestly the only person this bothers, I'll be very much surprised.

But rotting only triggers on fleshy creatures, nonfleshy are immune to disease. Thus this is somewhat helpful to prevernt you using the wrong skill on things.

I'm not really too bothered... I find the condition text to be more elegant in its current forms.

A skill that causes Bleeding, such as Sever Artery, doesn't specify that the opponent has to be able to bleed--though you certainly get the big red message when it doesn't work. My main problem here is the inconsistency.

Hey, at least the Area of Effect sizes have been standardized. Those were a nightmare. There's still a few off like Rodgort's Invocation ("Nearby" rather than "In the Area" if I remember right).

Sorry but , who cares?

This seems kinda pointless....

Oh I'm sorry what was I thinking I meant to make a thread about how much Factions sucks and how Anet screwed me out of my money at least that way I would have been like everyone else

I agree Kakumei, a LOT of skills need to be rewritten. Unfortunately some skills seem to state the obvious, because of LCD when it comes to common sense.

This thread will give Anet another reason to show how much "progress" they're making with fixing Factions when they're really just ignoring whats important:

Fixed skill descriptions of every inconsistent skill
Renamed Chitin Fragments to Shitin Fragments
Gave Shiro minipet chaos axe

this is the most picky thread i have ever read, ive been reading alot of them latley.

and my god... find something intresting to comment on. 0_0

lol? Have you stepped into Sardelac lately? I'd rather see the skill descriptions updated than half the silly ideas in there. Something interesting to comment on... like what, "zomg this guy's a jerk let me put him on gwg haha"? FYI, I did find this topic interesting...and very true. Instead of jumping on the "wtf lame topic" bandwagon, read it first, and see just how true it is. <.<

Reworded, consistent skill descriptions please.

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/List_of_skill_anomalies

Feel free to add anomalies you have observed.

I've been somewhat confused by alot of the spell descriptions also, just like in the mend ailment one for example. So, is burning and weakness not "removed" then? If they are, then why aren't they listed as "conditions" if there is a list? There's quite a few other spells (which I can't think of off hand) that kind of leave some things unanswered, or open to experimentation to find out.

I am with you. I can't believe that people are so quick, to look down an a valid thread such as this. Perhaps they use cookie cutter builds, and don't need to know what the skills actually do.

We now have a lot of duplicate skills, now add inconsistent descriptions, and multiply that by the number of chapters they plan to rush out. What a mess.

More than making it difficult to play, I think it makes it harder to design creative builds. I would appreciate it if they could make a manual with detailed game mechanics.

Getting off topic... Just like the shocking hilt, in guildwiki it is assumed that it might have armor penetration because it is linked to air magic, but does anyone really know? Remember the knights armor debacle?

I am not really complaining, but how hard would it be for them to clarify things a little.

To be fair to Arena Net, they have been much more consistent and systematic in their skill descriptions for Factions. Consistent to the extreme in some cases such as Wild Strike, which mentions losing "1 stance" (though, now that I think about it, it should say "at most 1 stance").

The only glaring issue is with their conflation of "teleport", "shadow step" and "return" with Assassin skills, which collides with other teleport skills in the game.

As a M:tG player converted to GW player, I think the same kind of consistency should be implemented in GW. I am saying this not because it needs to be "simple" but because it helps with identifying the similarities in skills and their usage.

MtG has over 3000 cards. If they did not have such a system you would be pretty hard pressed when making decks. GW Factions has 300+ on top of 454 (+res/cap) from Prophecies. We are slowly going up in the number of skills.

It helps with comboing skills if you can understand what they do at a glance instead of guessing because the text is ambiguous or wordy (removing a condition should not list all the conditions since conditions have a clearly marked :"Condition." when you have one).

For crystal wave (also Teinai's crystals), anyone who has not used the skill or bought it from the trainer cannot tell it removes conditions from the ENEMY. Some other skills carry the same abiguity like the Asasssin skills. Shadow step is the same as teleport.

Disease, bleeding, poison don't need "fleshy creature". If they don't have flesh they can't be conditioned with those.

I appreciate those who support and agree; while I could understand some could see this as "nitpicking", honestly I cringe every time I read some of these skills.

Hell, I'd be glad to do the job myself, if they'd be used.

I agree with the OP. Not only are these confusing skills descriptions annoying, they can also mess up new players getting used to playing GW. More consistant skill descriptions can only do good, and no harm.

I don't get why there are people flaming this post...it makes a good point. Skills descriptions should definitely be clear and concise. Please fix this ANet!

However, with your example of Rotting Flesh, I think that they "fleshy" part needs to be left in there (though they leave it out of other skills that require fleshy targets), but they can definitely throw out the "slowly loses health" part.

It would be nice if there was more consistency in the skill listing to help avoid confusion. I think you can figure out what the skills do from the text but it does seem like they have over complicated some of them. It is a bit picky, but if all it takes is to change the text in a couple of files I can't see why it couldn't or shouldn't be sorted out easily. If they can add weapons to mini pets that don't even use them, then I'm sure they could update a few of the skill descriptions.