User talk:Quizzical12571

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HI
Hi, I read your article on Aurora Glade HM, I followed your tips but i'm still have some trouble. Is it possible if you could help me? That would be much much apreciated. --Balistic Pve (T/C/E) 23:08, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Where exactly do you get stuck? If it's on the crystal running area (which is the part I wrote), what goes wrong?  Quizzical 00:10, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, I found a lovely shortcut for that if you're in a position to take a human along. A Shadow Form assassin can easily run the crystals, while carrying You Move Like a Dwarf! to slow the White Mantle runner. [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 00:17, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Well i think its lack of damage. I can't seem to kill the group. And yes it is the Running area. --Balistic Pve (T/C/E) 00:49, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Took me easily 5 minutes+ to outdamage those monks with the H/H team. If you can, try a mesmer hero with lotsa interrupts, Backfire and the new and nice VoR, and lock them on the monks. Flag everything with enough space so Searing Heat doesn't nuke them. Then you need to be able to run the crystals to the two closest shrines in order to keep always only one team fighting with your H/H team at any time, helping them whenever you are free of running crystals.
 * My experience shows it was kind of dependant on luck, luck that you don't get two Abbots on the first team that you fight. --Alf&#39;s Hitman 03:01, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * If you get an SF to run the crystals you won't have to fight at all, you get teleported when he's done. It does work in Hard Mode, I swear. [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 03:05, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


 * There are two things that are likely to go wrong in hard mode if you don't take the proper precautions. One is if more than one priest comes out at once to heal.  It sounds like this is what happened to you.  They'll only heal damaged allies within a fixed radius, so if you stay back far enough, the additional priests won't come.  Perhaps more to the point, it helps not to attack white mantle groups until they're pretty much right at the crystal pedestal, and not to scratch the crystal runner at all.  If there's only one priest, you can kill mobs pretty easily; if there are three, it's a lot harder.


 * The other thing that is likely to go wrong is if one runner group comes before the previous is dead. This is how mobs stack up, and how you get killed.  This usually requires that you brought out an extra priest or two too soon, as otherwise, henchmen and heroes probably would have killed the previous group quickly enough.  But it certainly requires mismanagement of crystal placing.  If one group of white mantle isn't dead, you can make the next group go back and forth only to the northeast pedestal indefinitely, giving the rest of your party all the time they need to finish off the previous group.  This might take several minutes if you have three priests at once, but you'll have all the time you need.  Quizzical 05:33, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

This seems as good a place to any to put this. As you saw, I'm new to GuildWiki, so I'm not exactly sure where to put just a simple greeting. Anyway, thanks for the tip. I was looking over your user page, and you seem to have quite a large amount of wisdom pertaining to Guild Wars. It's too bad you're not playing anymore (as far as I could tell), I would have loved to conquer stuff with you. Ah well. If you ever have any advice you'd like to share, I'd love to hear it. See you around. RevelationOrange 00:25, 13 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually, I started playing again about a month ago. I had always planned on returning sooner or later; it was only a question of when.  Quizzical 00:32, 13 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Well then, I could definitely use your help on some hard mode mission in nightfall, if you'd like :) RevelationOrange 09:06, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Have I ever told you how much I hate starting every other line with "Note" or "Tip"
First time, actually :-)

Thanks for cleaning up - I liked my edit a lot better than what was there before, but I like it still better now. I tried to preserve too much of the original text. --Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 21:08, 22 February 2009 (UTC)


 * To give a bit of historical detail, I've done each mission in each campaign with each of ten characters (one of each class) in easy mode, and then again in hard mode. That means ten successful runs in easy mode, and ten more in hard mode.  As I went along, I'd fix up the articles.  You can find my big edits on dates ranging from December 2007 up to August 2008.
 * Thanks for the background. I'm hitting this completely as a noob: first character, easy mode. &mdash;TEF


 * For the early missions in Prophecies, I was hesitant to change too much. As I went along, I got more comfortable with making big edits to wiki pages, and got a lot more aggressive about rewriting things.  As such, the mission pages that need the most work tend to come fairly early in Prophecies.  The dialogues section is also missing or incomplete in some Factions missions, and some missions are missing the hard mode mob levels entirely.


 * I also standardized the page format as I went along. Prior to that, the names of sections and subsections had varied quite a bit, but I made that effectively the same for every mission, deviating only when the structure of a mission demanded it.  For example, Vizunah Square has a "two party missions" subsection, while Iron Mines of Moladune has an "infusion run" subsection.  It looks like you've been adding new subsections to The Frost Gate, which I'm going to undo.
 * I also use subsubsections rather lightly. Mainly it's for missions that naturally break into disjoint, non-trivial parts (e.g., Boreas Seabed or The Eternal Grove) or missions for which it is essential to present alternate strategies (e.g., Dunes of Despair or Imperial Sanctum).  Adding lots of subsubsections everywhere for no apparent reason in particular tends to clutter a page.  Quizzical 22:31, 22 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree that consistency is critical. I agree with your idea about minimizing subsections (despite evidence ;-). I also think that it's worth dividing up a section whenever (a) it covers more than than the usual and/or (b) it covers more than just the topic at hand. Or, put another way, there's all types of clutter: too many subsections can be better than a walkthrough that mishmashes chronology and advice.


 * In Frost Gate, I found that different type of clutter and tried to resolve it by brute force separation, which helped preserve original text &amp; intent. Not an elegant solution, I admit. I like what you've better: by judicious editing, you've made the mission/bonus sections very readable and brief (eliminating any perceived need to subdivide).


 * On the other hand, would you consider dividing the Notes section, since half is about cartography (and not relevant for a lot of people)?
 * (In fact, I wonder if you would consider standardizing missions by always having a subsection to Notes that applies to cartography: (1) cartography isn't of interest to everyone and (2) it would make it easier to keep cartography tips and the mission articles synchronized; the relevant section of tips could be assembled from the various cartographic sections of articles.)


 * I'm going to continue to go through the missions and I'll keep your principles in mind if I edit anything. Here are my principles; let me know if you want to discuss.
 * advice and walkthrough should be distinct;
 * walking through should show clear chronology and correspond with map;
 * similar advice should be combined rather than repeated;
 * when sensible, basic advice should be distinct from advanced advice;
 * when sensible, original text/intent should be preserved (even if editor disagrees).


 * --Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 20:35, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * We could make a template for the map notes, much like Template:historical. -- ◄mendel► 22:12, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Trying to rigidly separate walkthroughs from advice would probably require largely redoing nearly every mission article on the wiki. It sounds nice in theory, but in practice it just makes a mess.  A lot of people would put a "tip" line here and there in an article, as if to separate the game mechanics from advice on what to do about it.  I cut down on that pretty aggressively, as it often made articles rather incoherent to have a bunch of sometimes contradictory tips floating around.
 * As far as mission advice goes, my basic principles are that it should
 * be specific to the mission, as opposed to something that would be true of many or most missions,
 * be better than what a typical competent player who is unfamiliar with the mission would be likely to try,
 * avoid advocating consumables or PvE-only skills whenever possible (see point 1), and
 * avoid advocating particular builds except when a mission really does require peculiar builds.
 * The notes section at the bottom of each article is generally for comments that might be interesting to know, but wouldn't help someone trying to beat the mission. The notes are often largely independent of each other, so writing them into a nicely flowing article was impractical.
 * I don't have a strict distinction between basic and advanced advice. There is a difference between the normal walkthrough and the hard mode section.  Basically, if something is important to know in hard mode but irrelevant in easy mode, it goes in the hard mode section.  If it's useful to know either way, it goes in the easy mode section.  There are very few examples of things that are useful to know in easy mode but irrelevant in hard mode.  The only one that I can think of off hand is that I put completely independent tactics on the Dzagonur Bastion page for easy mode versus hard mode.  The hard mode tactics work in easy mode, but the easy mode tactics are a lot easier to pull off successfully in easy mode.  The easy mode tactics completely fail in hard mode.
 * As far as preserving original text goes, I'd say that largely depends on how well you understand what you're doing. If something worked once, that could have been a fluke.  If you've only done a mission once or twice, be careful about making major changes to strategic advice that may sometimes fail spectacularly.  Sometimes a strategy may work very well if the player is one class, but completely fall apart if he is another class--and someone who doesn't play the latter class may not be aware of that.
 * But if you properly understand what you're doing, it's okay to make some big changes. The purpose of the wiki is to have good information for players who need help with a mission, not merely to make editors feel good that they didn't get reverted.  It's probably good to be hesitant to do too much at first, and then do more once you get the hang of it.  Obviously, you don't have to understand much about a mission to correct typos or miswordings.
 * Before I really carved up an article, I generally did the mission once as each class in easy mode, and then again in hard mode. In Prophecies and Factions, I generally didn't use heroes in easy mode (even with Nightfall characters), though I guess I made an exception for Dunes of Despair and The Eternal Grove.  I also avoided most PvE only skills and consumables, to avoid making the mission unduly easy where just about anything would work.  Once that was done, I figured that if something were likely to go wrong, I'd probably have seen it, and was a lot more comfortable with saying, no, that's bad advice and I'm going to remove it.
 * For what it's worth, the surest ways to get me to revert an edit are to add "bring a minion master" or "bring a bonder monk" tips. Minion masters tend to be rather feast or famine; sometimes they an make a mission look comically easy, and other times they'll wipe you--in the same mission, using more or less the same tactics.  Quizzical 23:24, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Dialogue layout revisited
Well, see (and comment) at User talk:Tennessee Ernie Ford/Shortcuts. -- ◄mendel► 05:16, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for visiting my page yesterday
It led me to your page which I must say is fantastic! I just spent about 2 years away from GW's playing EVE and Im now back and discovering or rediscovering this game. Thanks for all your work, I believe the info here will be very helpful to me. And it's nice to see another Messmer fan, there are too few of us in this game IMHO. -- conmcb25 14:22, 28 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm new to the wiki but i've been playing GW for about a year now. Nice to see people active in a community. thx for the welcome.--Mor Dred  1622  00:43, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome
Like the title says, thanks. And I like WoW and GW the same. They are both different and yet the same at the same time. SDK 05:27, 1 June 2009 (UTC)


 * If you want to like WoW, that's fine. It's a very good game for certain types of players.  But it's not the same as Guild Wars.  For starters, WoW is a WoW-clone, and Guild Wars is not.  More importantly, Guild Wars will fit around the real-life schedule of the player, while WoW demands that a player spend hours at a time on the game, and even schedule his life around a game in order to go raiding.  Guild Wars is also based more on the skill of the player, while WoW is mostly level and gear.  I made a huge long list of ways that Guild Wars is better than WoW once, but I don't care to post it here.  Quizzical 06:46, 1 June 2009 (UTC)


 * You're always so awfully positive :) --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]] -- (contribs) &emsp;(talk)  09:34, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Correction: GW USED to be based on the skill of the player. Now it's Build Wars and basically the only people with any remote levels of skill are interrupters and maybe infusers --Gimmethegepgun 03:40, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Spamming Savage Shot and/or dshot and/or Magebane on recharge does not take skill at all. Entropy [[Image:Entropy Sig 2.jpg]] (C) 04:14, 4 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Is Guild Wars based purely on the skill of the player? No.  But player skill plays a much larger role in Guild Wars than it does in WoW.  Even if it's a question of picking your build, being able to figure out which skills make sense for a particular area (both for yourself and heroes) does take a certain degree of skill.  In WoW, every class gets a canonical set of skills, so it lacks even this.  The talent points of WoW play a far, far smaller role than build choices in Guild Wars.  Quizzical 04:33, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
 * On the other hand, unlike the current GW, positioning is actually highly important in WoW (especially in PvE). There are skills that actually require you to hit a target from behind. A long long time ago, Bull's Strike used to need that too, but that was deemed too difficult for the average player's skill level and so now it procs on any direction of movement. One could argue that that constitutes "skill" of a different kind. Entropy [[Image:Entropy Sig 2.jpg]] (C) 04:55, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd say pve GW has a lot of importance on positioning. A good part of HM is about knowing where to stand and which directions to go so you don't aggro everything or drag dangerous things to the backline. Holding enemies in bottlenecks or at corners or the now rather oldfashioned box-them-in tactic. Pvp I can't claim to be any good at but most gametypes at least require you to move well with respect to your party and the enemies. I'm not saying WoW doesn't require the same things, but I think it's wrong to say GW doesn't. Unless you're running a team that is so much better than the enemy that you don't need to bother, and that's the same in both games. -Ezekiel  [Talk]  05:22, 4 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I have to deal with where I'm positioned vastly more in Guild Wars than I recall doing in WoW. Here, mob targeting depends in considerable part on your positioning; in WoW, it didn't.  A lot of area stuff like wards and wells depends on your positioning.  The only WoW skill that I can think of off hand that depended much on your positioning was a rogue's backstab, and even that was mostly, let someone else get aggro, go stand behind the mob, and hack away.  I guess Guild Wars doesn't let you jump off a cliff or fall in the lava the way WoW does, but the amount of skill that it takes to avoid doing that very often is very, very low.  Quizzical 05:37, 4 June 2009 (UTC)


 * It's important in GW, too, even now (you still don't run up to the enemy warrior unless you're a linebacking Warrior).
 * Also, invisibility defies the laws of positioning, tbh. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]] -- (contribs) &emsp;(talk)  13:06, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Nice preemptive strike
Nice job on doing all the z-quest missions, it will be much easier for us when they actually come out :) 75.92.46.118 00:20, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Vizunah Square
Have you been trying it since the update on RoJ?--Relyk 22:20, 4 June 2009 (UTC)


 * No, I haven't tried it in about a year. My expectation is that it would make minions less useful than before, and instead put more emphasis on wells, wards, and spirits.  Don't neglect the wells, as a lot of players do.  Quizzical 22:33, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Bah, 2 minion masters still pwn that mission, especially since you can make an instant army of 10 minions with one spell, and still have enough corpses left over for the other MM. --Macros 22:42, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Aura of the Lich is rather wasteful in Vizunah...you'd be exploiting quite possibly over 100 corpses at once, but can only control maybe 14 minions. Entropy [[Image:Entropy Sig 2.jpg]] (C) 08:12, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Not if the other MM is a hero (can't use AotL, so they use normal minions). They'll basically keep the unexploited body count to a reasonable level so when you use AotL, you'll only exploit 15 or so corpses :P Of course, when I did it, the hero had bone fiends, and they cost me my survivor during the cutscene. I thought Anet had fixed that bug... multiple times. --Macros 19:43, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I think I need a new guild
Short version:

I'd like to join a different guild. I mostly do PvE, and mostly with henchmen/heroes. For now, I'm vanquishing; if I get to harder content, I may offer to group with people. A guild, and more generally, an alliance, is primarily a chat channel, and that's how I use them. I can answer a lot of newbie questions about how to beat particular missions and quests, but I won't run people through them. I'm all in favor of trading with alliance members at around market value, but may snap at beggars if begging gets out of hand. If a guild tries to tell members what they have to do in the game and when, I won't put up with it, but will do the content I wanted to do instead. If you think I might be a good fit for your guild, let me know, either here or in-game. I'm still in my old guild for now, but that's easy to change if I find another one to join.

Long version, and reasons why I'm leaving the old guild:

I picked up Guild Wars again in early May after being away for about 9 months. Someone I had been in a couple of previous guilds with had her own guild, so I joined it. She never struck me as the guild leader type, but I figured she could be competent if she wanted to. Well, it turns out that she wasn't the guild leader type, and the alliance leaders had pressured her into it, and after a few weeks, she got sufficiently flustered to leave the guild entirely. This was the day after I joined.

She appointed someone else chosen by the alliance leaders to be the new guild leader. Unfortunately, the new guild leader was pretty much never around. What I've heard is that he plays Guild Wars, but on an unspecified different account, so if one needs to contact him, well, tough luck. Naturally, with an absentee guild leader and no one in the guild knowing what is going on, the size of the guild dwindled as time passed.

Yesterday the guild leader finally showed up to castigate the officers for insufficient recruiting. When I logged back on today, all of the officers had been demoted, and in their place, four people from outside the guild had been invited and immediately promoted to officer.

The previous situation of letting the guild slowly die was unsustainable, so something did need to change. But making that sort of abrupt changes is the sort of thing that you just don't do without keeping your guild informed. There didn't seem to be any explanation posted anywhere, so I asked the guild leader what was going on. All I could get out of him was for him to say that officers must have vent. Naturally, an absentee guild leader didn't have the slighest clue if at least some of the old officers had vent, and that's hardly a complete explanation of such a big shakeup.

I found one of the other officers online and asked him what was going on in a variety of ways. Mostly he'd just say that they were rebuilding the guild. Right, so the guild leader had run the guild into the ground so that he could rebuild it? I pressed for details, but none were forthcoming. After asking a variety of rather specific questions, the new officer said that the new officers had been elsewhere in the alliance, but just not in this particular guild. Given that I'd never heard of any of them, it's pretty safe to say that they rarely or never talked in alliance chat.

The only other detail I could get out of the officer was the name of the alliance leader. Given that I'd never heard of him, it's pretty safe to say that he's not active in alliance chat, either. And this wasn't a brief conversation that yielded these few details. This was over the course of an entire vanquish that I did. Mostly the conversation would go something like this:

Me: (rather detailed question about what happened) (a few minutes pass without the officer saying anything) Officer: "ok?" Me: That didn't answer the question.

Part of the time, it felt like talking to a gold farmer who didn't speak English. So while something needed to change in the guild, it's far from clear that this sort of inept guild mismanagement is even an upgrade over a purely absentee guild leader. As such, I think it's time for me to find another guild. Quizzical 05:49, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
 * You can join my guild if you like; as an added bonus, an officer, myself, and a non-guild friend have just started vanquishing. Current members include Entropy and Shadowcrest, plus like 10 other active members and about as many non-actives. We talk about anime a lot, if that's okay with you. We're also Luxon. [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 06:42, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Quizzical, you just basically described my guild word for word. We're a small guild (currently 17 members) and pretty much everyone plays the same way you do. We don't "tell members what they have to do in the game and when", but we do like to organize something every once in a while. No one is forced to come, and if enough people don't want to (or don't even show up), we'll do something else. We love to AB. And we have a sense of humor. Sometimes a crude sense of humor. Okay, more often crude than not. But we're all mature (I'm one of the youngest members, at 19 years old). I also need someone to talk wiki with, since everyone else thinks that other wiki is better, and they don't edit nearly as much as me. --Macros 07:07, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm hoping to have quite a few other players to chat with, whether in guild chat or alliance chat. A small guild that is part of a larger alliance is fine if it has enough chatty people that there will be people at least intermittently talking in either guild or alliance chat most of the time that I'm on.  Well, saying things other than "someone give me a free run to Droknar's Forge" or "someone give me 50k for armor".
 * If people have the idea that the official wiki is better, wait until someone asks for help with a reasonably complicated mission. Point them to GuildWiki, and if they say that they've checked the official wiki, then you say to the effect of, if you don't go where the information is, then of course you won't find it.  The official wiki mostly recommends a bunch of random skills to use, rather than giving detailed tactics.  Except when someone plagiarizes off of GuildWiki, as I discovered today had happened with Sunjiang District, so I had to register on the official wiki and revert it.  Quizzical 07:21, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
 * We need an alliance tbh. [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 07:26, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, we have people from all over the world, and they have different timezones. But for some reason, most of the Brits are on during American hours (some stay up until 2 am their time). Our guild chat is pretty busy, and sometimes a real conversation can be started in alliance chat. --Macros 08:07, 19 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Macros, what's an in-game character name of yours? I could find Felix's on his user page, but not yours.  Quizzical 18:49, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Macros The Black, which is my newest character, and the only one with the word 'Macros' in the name. --Macros 19:32, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

User talk:127,0,0,1
WTF? Also, can you conform that the content you posted on the page is compatible with cc-by-nc-sa Talk  07:53, 27 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Someone I was talking to in-game wanted to see some stuff I had written about another game. He said he used GuildWiki, but hadn't registered.  I said to register and I'd put it on his talk page.  Apparently all he did was register and not otherwise use the account.
 * The articles I posted there are things that I wrote myself and had previously posted elsewhere. I'd assume that is enough to satisfy any copyright issues.  GuildWiki is hardly the first place where I've written lengthy guides to various portions of online games.  Quizzical 08:20, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Hey there
Hi ~ &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by A F K When Needed (contribs).
 * Mean, I did sign with ~ :/ A_F_K_sig_2.jpg A F K When Needed 08:31, 1 July 2009 (UTC)


 * If it was a wiki malfunction that prevented the signature from working (and apparently some new editor has lots of weird bugs), then I apologize. I thought your post was a joke (and still do, as I type this), and responded as such.  Quizzical 08:54, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Indeed it was a joke. As are any "wiki malfunctions" which add nowiki tags... I'm guessing...
 * So... yeah, hi. A_F_K_sig_2.jpg A F K When Needed 09:43, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Blog vs. Wiki
At times, you have used both your userpages here as well as a blog to publish op-ed pieces about gaming, specifically Guild Wars. Now that Wikia is offering blogging tools with the wiki (it should become enabled here sometime today), the question arises what the advantages and disadvantages of each publication model are. I'm sure you have thoughts on that matter; would you share them with us? -- ◄mendel► 07:40, 1 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually, the reason why I did the blog on the other site was because the alternative was a forum thread that would quickly get buried. With a blog, if someone liked one of my articles and wanted to go read others, it was easy to find them all.  Obviously, user space on a wiki has the same functionality, so I wouldn't have an obvious reason to prefer one over the other.  Quizzical 08:47, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks
Yeah, I wasn't trying to create a character page I was messing around because I'm new and don't really know what I'm doing. Thank you for telling me about copying code though. >>; I guess I should have realized I could just enter edit to copy code from another's profile. I just didn't want to go messing around with other peoples profiles so it didn't really come to mind. Any way thank you a lot. --La Fey 05:39, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

What does it mean to be overpowered in PvE?
I'm hoping that you can help me understand why (if?) PvE Shadow Form is overpowered. In fact, I have trouble with the concept of anything in PvE§ being overpowered, since the only enemies are the AI and the player's likelihood to get bored. I have tried reading the various posts/blogs on game update and skill pages, but that usually ends up being a name-calling fest and it's hard to find the kernels of considered opinions in the walls-of-text.

If I understand correctly, the arguments against certain PvE skills§ (and my counters) are:
 * 1) It makes it too easy to solo some/many elite areas;
 * 2) * How am I hurt if the player next-door can solo an area? It's still a challenge for me and for the people with whom I play.
 * 3) It reduces the diversity of players willing to PUG in certain areas;
 * 4) * PUGlies are always going to glom onto a small set of builds (it's human nature). I actually prefer that I can easily identify the non-creative players by their dependence on a single build.
 * 5) It ruins the economy by making it easy for a limited # of players to farm hard-to-get items.
 * 6) * Why should I care if the player next-door has 400 fill-in-the-blanks to sell? Mostly, I'm not going to buy them b/c I generally prefer to earn things on my own. And if I am WTB, then it's great that someone will always have one to sell at a nearly-standard price.

§ I'm referring to profession skills in PvE, not the title-based skills which are also sometimes called PvE skills.

I assume that there are other arguments which I haven't read or perhaps haven't understood, so I am hoping that you can explain them. (I'm posting here because I value your thoughts &mdash; your opinions are always well thought out, even when (esp. when?) I might disagree.)

Thanks in advance; I'll take my answer off the air. &mdash; Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 22:51, 12 August 2009 (UTC)


 * If you're referring to what I said on the shadow form thread, my argument isn't that shadow form is overpowered, but rather, that even if we begin by assuming that it is overpowered, giving signet of disenchantment to a bunch of mobs is a terrible way to deal with it, as that will unbalance a lot of other things.
 * As for how a skill can be overpowered, when a skill is so strong that people want to take it basically everywhere and use it extensively everywhere and it doesn't have any decent substitutes, there's a problem. I think it's better for gameplay if all skills are useful in some places and not in others, as that pushes for more variety in gameplay.  Variety is important to good gameplay, as if all a game has is a bunch of "kill 1000 rats" quests, that makes for a boring game, no matter how good the basic core mechanics are.  In defending overpowered skills, some players have essentially resorted to claiming that play balance is a bad thing and some skills should be a lot stronger than others to the degree that it doesn't matter that the game has the others.  That's a philosophical point about game design, I guess, but an opinion that I disagree with.
 * I think the best example of an overpowered skill was Ursan Blessing until it was nerfed about a year ago. Group with a random person and often as not his build would be ursan blessing plus a bunch of skills that he wouldn't use because ursan replaced his skillbar.  Some people assumed that everyone would take ursan blessing precisely because it was so overpowered, to the degree of refusing to group with people who wouldn't go ursan unless they were healers.
 * You talk about excluding PVE-only skills. In that case, have a look at shadow form as it was somewhat over a year ago.  It had a 32 second base duration at 16 shadow arts (compared to 22 seconds today), making it easy to maintain it forever.  It didn't reduce your damage, so it basically meant players running around completely invincible unless they happened to run into a mob with one of the few skills that can remove shadow form.  In most places, it meant players running around completely invincible, period.
 * As for why that's a bad thing, you could go read the archives of ursan blessing. One argument I used was this.  Suppose that if you typed "iwin" in the chat, it would instantly kill all of the mobs in the zone.  That would make any mission or vanquish trivial, and you could easily collect the loot at your leisure.  Would having that in the game be good game design?  The difference between that and intentionally having strongly overpowered skills is one of degree, not one of type.  Quizzical 01:16, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the quick reply. I wasn't referring to anything specifically that you had posted. I was just trying to figure out why so many people were up in arms about Shadow Form generally... or profession-based PvE skills at all.


 * I agree that diversity makes for a more interesting game. I also think, with 100,000s of ppls playing (and with a range of skills), there are always going to be favorites. Especially since the possible combinations of builds is overwhelming to anyone who hasn't played 1000 hours. So, it doesn't bother me if there's abuse of a couple of skills. And, as I mentioned, that overuse gives me a quick way of identifying ppl I won't want to PUG with.


 * The old Shadow Form sounds like a very boring way to play. And I guess I have no problem if 40% of the players want mindless grind using the same skill repeatedly. It's their time. As long as I know that my titles, few they might be, have been earned, I don't really care if other peoples grind or pay for theirs.


 * Anyhow, thanks again for your explanation; it was very helpful to me.  &mdash; Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 02:49, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Main Sail
I think it's because the Main Sail page is still just a rough piece of work that RT only did an Autoconfirmed protection. Doesn't really matter anyways. The likelihood of a vandal trying to melt the wiki by blanking the Main page is equal to the chance he'll vandalise Bendah... and just as easy to revert. --- -- (contribs)  &emsp;(talk)  17:30, September 19, 2009 (UTC)


 * I really typed that only because I needed an edit summary to remove a comma and wanted to say something interesting. :D  Quizzical 17:49, September 19, 2009 (UTC)


 * Oic. Whatever floats your boat, eh ^^ --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG]] -- (contribs) &emsp;(talk)  18:00, September 19, 2009 (UTC)

Capitalization
Hi, are you planning to respond at Talk:Vizunah Square (mission)? —Shidou 23:05, October 21, 2009 (UTC)

Quizzical 02:48, October 22, 2009 (UTC)

Wintersday
Have a happy and a merry! &mdash; Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 18:03, December 25, 2009 (UTC)

yo
Next time, please just put a delete tag on the image itself instead of a comment on the talk page - that makes an extra thing that has to be deleted. It's not a whole lot of extra work, no, but it's still more efficient. &mdash;Dr Ishmael 14:55, January 5, 2010 (UTC)

Guides
Hi, have you stopped making guides?

I've found them quite interesting, as your play style is at the other end of the spectrum than mine, and on occasion they've proved quite the valuable resource, for which I thank you. While I'm not here to ask you to do more, I was wondering if I should continue to await good tidings with hope, or banish my dreams of you having a full set. :) A F K When Needed 19:15, July 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * The missions are all done already, both in easy mode and hard mode. I've already done all of the easy mode dungeons except for Slavers' Exile, though now that you bring it up, it looks like I forgot to post something for Forgewight.  That leaves only hard mode dungeons and most of the vanquishes, and I can't write a guide until I do the content.  And that doesn't happen while I'm playing other games.
 * I guess there are also guides for quests, but few of those are hard enough to need much of a write-up beyond the nuts and bolts already on the wiki page. I did post quite a bit for Round One: Fight!, and I posted some stuff for Cold as Ice and Protect the Learned on the talk pages.  The only non-elite mission that I haven't done that is hard enough to deserve a guide is The Troubled Keeper.
 * But the real issue is that I don't progress in Guild Wars while I'm playing some other game instead. I've mostly been playing Champions Online this year.  I'm not at the moment because the last patched messed up some things (it added a "hard mode" of sorts to instanced missions, and also disabled a large fraction of the game's instanced missions), but Cryptic hopes to fix that this week.  I've been playing Guild Wars and Civilization 4 some in the meantime.  Quizzical 20:10, July 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * So, walkthroughs: been there; done that. What about how to play a ____ guides? Or how to kit out heroes? Or how to avoid stupid inventory management issues? Your guides are some of the best and most useful writing on MMOs out there. Although (as you know), I don't always agree/endorse your advice, I believe it to be wonderfully accessible to a wide spectrum of players (n00bs, veterans, and those in-between); that's very, very rare. Plus, at least here @GWiki, your articles (public and user page) typically generate some excellent discussions, sometimes inspiring new contributors and almost always affecting other ppl's play.


 * tl;dr: I have no hesitation asking to see more of your work. So, if you have any time (after playing CO and that big time suck, Civ4, and that bigger time suck, RL), please, share with us again. :-) &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 20:23, July 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * User:Quizzical/Hardware There, it's a guide to buying a new computer. Is that what you were after?  :D
 * I usually don't write a guide unless I think I can do better than what's already out there, or for completeness in a class of guides where I think I can do better than what's already out there in some others. E.g., my Chahbek Village guide probably isn't terribly useful, but was written just so I'd have one for every mission.
 * A guide of how to play a given class is hard to do well. That's a large part of the reason why so many such guides are worthless.  I hate class guides that are basically a database of things that are easy to look up for yourself, with no high-level advice.  A good class guide needs to emphasize the things that are unique about a class.  But that's hard to do in Guild Wars with both secondary professions and PvE-only skills blurring the lines between classes.
 * I don't think there's that much to be said on how to equip heroes. Get a collector weapon and put the mods on it that you want.  Buy runes and insignias and apply them.  I guess builds are more complicated.  But even there, the importance of a good build is vastly overrated.  Some people seem to see builds as canonical constructions that magically appear on PvX wiki and can't be modified at all.  That's crazy.  Just grab several skills that cover all of the things that you want the hero to do and you're set.  While there can be synergies between a few skills, it's only a handful of peculiar gimmick builds that really need synergies along the entire skill bar.  Quizzical 21:30, July 6, 2010 (UTC)
 * What weaknesses can a build have, how do I recognize them, and how do I remedy them? The obvious one is running out of energy, switch to skills that use less or add skills that give you energy (energy management). It happens that a build serves quite well and seems an alround build, and then I happen on a different type of foe, and the build fails, and as a beginning player, I would have only a dim idea what's wrong with it. I have no idea if this is an area on which advice could be profitably and structuredly given, but if it is, I don't think we have it. -- ◄mendel► 22:25, July 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * As my grandmother used to say of the food at her old age home, "the food is terrible; and the portions are so small." Your work is a bright light in the darkness, so ignore my specific topics; I'm sure (if you have the interest in writing), as Mendel suggests, there are plenty out there that need help.


 * The importance of a good build is overrated; they are not magic (well, so to speak). So, why mage builds aren't magic or evaluating someone else's build for your play style.
 * And, yuck, laundry list or encyclopedic class guides. How about some first principles with illustrative examples? And (if I understand your stated preferences correctly), what about a Playing a Pure Mesmer or ...Pure Ranger in guild wars, which targets a play style emphasizing the unique parts of single-prof toons. I think people who play mixed profs and title skills would also find such advice useful. It might generate more enthusiasm for the style, which might lead to more games maintaining greater distinctions between the roles.
 * I don't think pppls really know how to kit out. They buy runes and insignias and apply them blindly, according to word-of-mouth advice. There's not a lot of help out there to compare HP vs AC, dmg plus generically vs targeted, or HCT vs HSR (and whether generic or not). Most PvE spellcasters I've met have never thought about using multiple weapon sets, especially not ones that involve spears or shields.


 * tl;dr There's a paucity of good guides out there; any article you write, no matter how limited its scope, will be a step in a better direction. I look forward to reading them (and re-reading your older stuff, too; I keep learning). &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 23:51, July 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * There really isn't that much to say about picking out runes and insignias. Figure out which attributes you use, and buy a minor rune for each.  Buy the best vigor rune you can afford.  If there are any spots left, fill them with vitae or attunement runes.  Get headgear that gives +1 to whatever attribute you want the most points in.  For insignias, pick the one that will on average give you the most armor and put that in every slot.  I guess an exception can be made for bloodstained in one slot for a minion master.
 * On the question of health versus armor, there isn't that much to say, either. Armor is almost invariably better.  Health is just used for some gimmick builds like 600.  I guess I could give a long write-up of why armor is better, and probably have on a talk page at least once.
 * Even a guide of playing using only skills from your primary profession would be a pretty broad topic. An average profession has around a hundred skills, and there aren't any basic staple skills that everyone who plays a given class needs to use extensively, as there are with a lot of other games.  Most classes can easily produce 3-4 complete, viable builds with no skills common to any two of the builds.
 * Constructing a build is mostly about sifting through your skills and saying, hey, that one looks useful, and putting it on your skill bar. Occasionally you say, hmm, I need a skill that does such and such, so you look through your list of skills, find one that does what you need, and put it on your skill bar.  Maybe sometimes it has to go on a hero's skill bar instead.  It's not that hard to do, but I think the real problem is that a lot of people are too intimidated to try making their own build.  One thing I recommend is that if a mob is really annoying, figure out what skill makes it so annoying, and then use it yourself and see how it goes.
 * People very often ask in alliance chat, what's the best secondary profession for this class? And my answer is always the same:  if you know what you want from your secondary profession, then that answers your question, and if you don't know, then it doesn't matter what you pick.  You can change your secondary profession later if you decide you want a different one.  If you have no clue now, then try taking one that you haven't played before to unlock some skills that you get from quest rewards.  It sounds smart-alecky, but it's the correct answer.
 * There's this guide to figuring out whether someone else's build is viable. Applying it to your own build works just fine, too.  Quizzical 05:23, July 7, 2010 (UTC)
 * The PUG guide, indeed. I had been thinking to myself that you'd need to evaluate your build in the context of your team, and of course that goes for H&H as well; I was hoping there'd be more theory. Maybe there isn't. Thank you. -- ◄mendel► 08:10, July 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * Armor vs. health: Tbh, even on 600 monks it matters little. Mine does/did fine without going all-out on Health. Shelling out the gold for more health wasn't an issue, but not a neccesity either. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG]] -- (contribs) &emsp;(talk)  16:17, July 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * Using spirit bond+protective spirit to keep yourself alive doesn't work so well if you don't lose the 60 health to trigger spirit bond when hit. Or at least that's my understanding of what 600 monks do.  Regardless, that's a gimmick build, and not one I've tried myself.
 * Checking your own build to make sure it fits with the group is largely a matter of not having a suicidal build (e.g., 300 max health), not duplicating skills of other party members when they don't scale well (e.g., one paragon with "stand your ground" is nice, but four of them is redundant), and making sure that your party has all of the necessary things filled, though that can be done by you or by someone else. Having enough defensive skills is the big catch; taking three healers (which includes healing monks, protection monks, restoration ritualists, and sometimes paragons) is my default, and then having everyone else bring a defensive skill or two means that the party ends up with plenty.  Having enough resurrection skills is another issue in missions; saying a few people bring a permanent rez and everyone else brings a signet will cover that.  In vanquishes or dungeons where a wipe doesn't matter so much, this isn't necessary.
 * The more complicated thing that needs to be changed a lot is that some places you need a lot of condition removal, some you only need a little, and in others you don't need any at all. Same with enchantment removal, hex removal, and interrupts.  Some places greatly benefit from some particular skill, such as Ward Against Harm in Gate of Pain.  Make a checklist of what the party needs and make sure that everything you need is brought in adequate measure by someone in the party.
 * One could perhaps launch into great detail about how this particular combination of skills works a little better than that one, but that's unnecessary. Which combinations work better will also vary by area, and by the playing style of the players involved.  With few exceptions, a decently balanced party build that covers the basics of what your party needs is good enough.  Quizzical 18:31, July 7, 2010 (UTC)

Hence the word, "slightly"
My edit attempted to remove the awkwardness causes by the awkward combination of new team size with the newly leveled-up henchies. Fortunately, you rescued the awkwardness of the awkward abbreviation. Thanks! &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 18:09, July 11, 2010 (UTC)