Anet, your templating...

Except that Obsidian Flame isn't affected by Mantra of Earth and doesn't trigger Storm Chaser. It's not earth damage, it just happens to be in the earth line.

Obsidian Flame would be the exception then. Every single Warrior, Ranger and Assassin attack skills' +damage ignores armor but this isn't specified in the skill description. Similarly every Necro and Mesmer skill that deals unspecified damage is armor ignoring. It would be more consistent to remove the armor ignoring statement from Obsidian Flame rather than adding it to Crystal Wave.

You're right, I was looking at it from the wrong angle.

What would also be nice is some convenient, easy-to-notice in-game resource that explains things like what it means to be fleshy, how lifestealing differs from damage, what a condition is, and so forth. Then there would be no need to clutter up skills with explanations of the mechanics they're using.

In game glossary would definitely rock.

Physical vs Elemental vs Lifestealing vs Critical hits, etc.

Last I checked, this would be another skill wording in need of correction/revision. You can only be under the effects of one stance at any given time, meaning by default, it can only remove a maximum of one stance at any given time. If anything, this should be worded closer to Wild Blow - If Wild Blow hits, any "Stance" being used by your target ends.



If you believe that Magic the Gathering has 3,000 cards, then you started playing the game 2 weeks ago, or stopped playing it 10 years ago. With the exception of core sets and basic lands, the vast majority of cards printed are not re-prints, but new cards altogether, although sometimes they make a card identical in all ways except name to an already existing one…



Life Stealing is not damage or healing, and is therefore not affected by anything that relates to either effect. This is actually one of the few consistent things in regards to how skills work out of what I usually use. How it works is it removes said amount of life from the opponent and transfers it to you. One of my favorit things is using vampiric touch on an SB’d 55 monk in randoms. Skill, not spell so SB doesn’t protect, and life stealing, so they die instantly. They think I’m hacking usually. Soul Leach works wonders against random 55’s as well.



There was a discussion about this a short while back. Damage modifiers from attacks do not ignore armor. The reason it seems like they do is because the game applies the damage to its calculations after effects of armor are resolved. The poster of that thread thought it made warriors do powerful. In fact, if it was applied before armor calculations, and therefore included in them, it would make warriors even more powerful, as it would increase the damage dealt to squishies. In regards to another poster, I believe that Conjure Element spells function the same as damage modifying attacks.





Now in regards to damage types, I have noticed that there are damage types and sub-damage types. Physical, Earth, Lighting, ect and piercing. I believe the jitte specifies bludgeoning damage, but I cannot remember and cannot check right now. Other than that, I don’t recall ever seeing anything in the game regarding bludgeoning damage or slashing damage (if there even is slashing damage). Piercing damage is specified on pick axes, but not on bows, where it is most predominant.
The weapons in this game should all include exactly what type of damage they do. Bows should list piercing damage, hammers should list bludgeoning, and if slashing damage exists, axes and swords should list slashing damage. If slashing damage does not exist, it should be added. This however, as far as I know, is only important in regards to piercing damage on a couple skills such as Whirling Defense. It would still be nice to have even if it does not have any in-game effect.




Make skill descriptions streamlined and consistent:
/signed

Create an In-Game encyclopedia of condition types, types of damage, ect.
/signed

Include all forms of damage types weapons and skills do
/signed

Do away with skill descriptions on your skill bar after you leave a town/outpost
/maybe

Any other good ideas on the same topic presented here that I have missed or come after my post
/signed

The obsessive compulsive, nit-picking collector in me likes this idea very, VERY much. There was something that had always bugged me about the wording of some of the skill descriptions, but could never quite point it out. You hit the nail on the head.

Any MTG player would fully agree with this thread. WotC takes great time and care to word their cards correctly and consistant with previous editions.

Anet needs to follow the same guidelines about wording. Too many times have the discription of a skill not work like the description or its completely OMITTED *cough dark fury*

Dark fury reads nearby range but is really compass size. It used to function at nearby range but was changed and nothing in the updates about it. It also has a 50/50 chance of failing <5 blood. That is really important about how the skill works but is no where in the wording.

Its not like it takes a lot of time to clean up some text on a skill and make an update. Somethings people ask of are very difficult to pull off but not this.

You're right about mend ailment, but Rotting Flesh can only target Fleshy Creatures.

No wonder GW is getting so messed up. Half the community is dead set on having the Anet team focus on the big picture, and the other half wants them to focus on the teeny weeniest of details...

Truly, everything revolves around the two warring Factions...

Poison and Disease can only affect "fleshy" creatures--this is part of the Conditions, and not specfically a limiter of Rotting Flesh. It has no place being on that particular skill and no others.

QFT - I'd rather they spend their time on important things (like per-character build templates) instead of debating whether skill text is elegant or not.

I think wikipedia needs more copy editors, if you'd like to contribute to copy editing debate I'd suggest going there.

you're not the only one who has a problem with it, unfortunately with other more glaring changes needed to be made, this problem seems more pedantic rather than something that needs attention. majority of the players are now familiar with the skills, hence they aren't bothered by skill descriptions as much as new players would be.

I am shure quite a few people here, myself included, would be willing to re-write the skill descriptions. Even dealing with full-time job, family issues, ect, I find it highly unlikely it would take more than a week, if even that long. After that, unless those working at ArenaNet are increadably crappy at organizing their code, I would be supprised to see it take more than an hour to update the existing skill descriptions.

If anyone is particularly picky, re-writing the skill descriptions could become a prodject for those of us who use GWG, enshuring (in theory) that the updated discriptions are accurate, consistant, ect.

A few of the other things, such as the in-game encyclopedea of crap people may need/want to know, would be a bit more complex to implement, however still would not be difficult.

I saw in another thread someone mention that it seems ArenaNets priority for updates is - easiest comes first. If true, this should be at the TOP of the list.

Templating them on GuildWiki, useful resource as it is, doesn't actually accomplish anything--unless the guy at Anet in charge of skill wording actually reads GuildWiki and would take those templates and implement them.

So I post here about it to see whether this is a legitimate concern in the eyes of other players. Hence the nature of a forum. I don't know where it says in the rules that all threads made must be interesting to everyone.

This idea occurred to me--actually to go through and template every existing skill, and lay them out for Anet to see, and perhaps even utilize. I would be very interested in such a project.

No option but to just do it:

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/GuildWi...kill_templates

All the player skills with their descriptions as of today. Edit/standardize away!

I'm sorry but I have no idea what you just said, could you word this differently ? And a link to said discussion would be nice as well.

Edit: What I said was that +damage on Attack Skills ignored armor, which is true. I think you're talking about something else. Executioner's Strike will always deal +42 damage at 16 DM, regardless of target armor.

Actually, assuming teh squishy is wearing 60 armor, damage dealt would only be increased if the warrior has weapon mastery greater than 12. At exactly 12 (and assuming warrior is level 20), the armor effect exactly cancels out.

I'm really confused here. Every single hammer, bow, axe, sword in the game I have seen so far specifically say they deal Blunt, Piercing, or Slashing damage.

Could you possibly be playing using a different language setting, and that particular localization left out the damage type? I know the English interface definitely has it.

I was almost positive that the skill mentioned ignoring armor last I looked at it, and suprise, it seemed to have been removed for some reason. However, Tenai's Crystals, the Crystal Wave Factions counterpart, has armor ignoring(ness) in its description properly. They're the same skills, yet they have two different descriptions? I believe this is an unintentional mistake that Anet made an update or a few ago.

Oh nice. I suppose I'll get on that.

I agree with the original poster 100% - the M:tG analogy is perfect, I myself had been thinking the same thing since I started playing GW.

What I was saying is that in calculations, attacks such as Executioner's Strike do not ignore the armor, they are applied after armor is calculated. End result is the same, but for those of us that are picky, we like being clear on exactly how it works.

EDIT: Searched for the thread, found nothing - cant remember its name now eather, warriors to overpowerd or something. To lazy to search longer.

I seriously doubt any character who wants to do damage will be using 12 weapon mastery. I run 16 constantly, and I am fairly shure this is a common occurance. Hence why I said the damage would be increased to squishies if the damage modifiers from attacks where applied before armor factors.



I dont remember ever seeing this. Perhaps it was added as an unlisted update recently (I havnt been able to play for a while), or perhaps I am just blind. Next time I manage to log on, I will check.

Random Comment - sundering SUCKS

I completely agree. There is no reason for it. It's as if the skill developers were separated from each other when they were developing the skills, and then the proof reader was on his tea break when they were due to be reviewed. Sigh.

flame on.... a little open endedness on a few skill description that a moron could still figure out and the game is ruined for you? Wow, I beleive this is called obsessive compulsive disorder. Honestly who cares about the skill description, its not hard to figure out what it does from a piglatin description. There is a lot more to the game than the ambiguous, yet perfect, grammar of the skill description.

To be honest, there are quite a few good reasons for all descriptions to be uniform, the only one I can think of at the moment, it being 23:22, being the language barrier. There are many players of Guild Wars whose language is not supported. These players may or may not have a firm grasp of the English language, and may therefore be completely and utterly confused by all the different descriptions of what is essentially the same effect. These people are not morons. And it is not obsessive compulsive disorder either... unless he has he tap each surface 17 times before leaving the room... or turn the light switch on and off 46 times before going to bed... but I digress.

I'd like to see an update that went down that list on the wiki and fixed all the consistancy issues in the skill descriptions. It's not the biggest issue for me, since unlike card games the server decides what happens and makes the results consistant for you. It's just a matter of figuring them out, which is something that should ideally be clear from the text without a need for trial and error.

/signed

They do need to standardize the skill descriptions, it's a lot easier to pick up when everything is explained consistently. Plus, skill ambiguity makes people have to go test the skill to find out "does it ignore damage?" "is armor calculated on +damage?" "does this spell remove all conditions or just the ones listed?" and post results on wikis and forums. Not everyone reads those, and not everyone should have to, and not everyone should have to run a bunch of testing on a skill because its description doesn't make sense.

Since skills are integral to gameplay, and editing some text doesn't take a lot of time or effort, I'm inclined to hope this goes near the top of their priority list.

You answered your own question already. Morons. We morons like unambiguous skill descriptions. It's a moron thing... you wouldn't understand.

Anyhow, don't you have better things to do than try to teach sense to us morons?

I agree with you, this needs to be done, to stop confusing.