User talk:Savio

I hear he loves sundering and is just trying to get prices to go down.
 * LOL you're getting eviscerated :p Skuld  00:01, 11 April 2006 (CDT)

Welcome aboard. :) --Karlos 02:03, 11 April 2006 (CDT)
 * I've been here for a while now :p I just haven't really gotten around to fact-checking a lot of things. I'm getting off my lazy bum now because there were some egregious errors in the Absorption article that someone had linked to, which makes me mad enough on the forums. And yes, I checked it once again before I edited all the articles, as there always is someone who says "But didn't the last update fix it?" Sigh... off to quell misinformation again. -Savio 07:41, 11 April 2006 (CDT)
 * Great edits. I especially noticed the Arena updates, which definitely needed some help (... and I'd done some of it).  Also, I share  some of your rage, especially the Holy / Light damage issue.  I have to restrain myself from making a scene when Judge's Insight comes up, doing the best I can to try and make the things factually accurate without having to argue too much.  Also, Guru rocks, being the other place I spend any real amount of time reading about guildwars.  Glad to see you getting active.  --JoDiamonds 23:18, 11 April 2006 (CDT)

Holy/Light damage
If we go by the available evidence, then holy and light are different damage types. The former is armor ignoring, and the latter isn't, similar to the situation with the shadow and dark damage pair. In this sense it is simply incorrect to say that holy and light damage are functionally the same. Judge's Insight is an anomalous skill that I believe should say "light" instead of "holy". The alternative is to treat holy damage dealing skills are inherently armor ignoring, but the "skills are inherently armor ignoring or not" schema is both aesthetically unsatisfactory and imperspicuous. Not to put too fine a point on it, but hating players for thinking that holy and light are different damage types is just directing your hatred arbitrarily. &mdash; Stabber (talk) 23:38, 11 April 2006 (CDT)
 * I don't hate players, just bad ideas. The current facts are:
 * Both Light and Holy damage triggers the Tormentor's +5 damage against Holy attacks. (A simple test is to run around Ascalon with full Tormentor's armor; one of the Monk Charr, I think the Shaman (might be the Martyr though, or possibly both), wields a Smiting Rod. The +20 damage is noticeable when you have 70 AL.)
 * Both Light and Holy damage do double damage versus Undead.
 * All weapons that deal Light damage do not ignore armor. In fact, all weapons do not ignore armor.
 * All skills that deal Holy damage ignore armor.
 * Judge's Insight does not deal any damage on its own, it only changes weapon type. In other words, it's not like Illusionary Weaponry, which specifically states it does a certain amount of damage. It does not cause the target's weapon to ignore armor.
 * The "Holy and Light are different" theory tries to eliminate the whole "depends on skill" necessity, but still has problems with several skills, such as Whirling Defense, Dust Trap, and Judge's Insight. The "depends on skill" theory may not make for fast, hard definitions of skills and damage types, but at least it doesn't have to keep coming up with excuses for itself. Linkie to old discussion.
 * Also as a side note, I don't know what the obelisk arena in Random Arenas is called, and there's almost no mention of it anywhere. How can I make an article about it if I don't even have a name? -Savio 00:39, 12 April 2006 (CDT)


 * If you notice, I was part of that thread! You might also be interested in List of skill anomalies, which was created contemporaneously with that thread (and each cites the other, I believe). &mdash; Stabber (talk) 00:41, 12 April 2006 (CDT)


 * Reading that article, something occured to me: why does everyone assume that Holy damage ignores armor? From SonOfRah's old article? From the highly outdated online manual? Or does everyone assume that since most Holy-type skills ignore armor, Judge's Insight is in error? -Savio 00:56, 12 April 2006 (CDT)


 * The latter. In all skills involving holy damage, with the sole exception of JI, and even counting the Factions skills, the damage is armor ignoring. This is why I believe that JI is simply an anomaly and that it was intended to be light damage all along. I don't see rational human beings going to the trouble of categorizing their own creations, but secretly putting the lie to their efforts by doing something arbitrary. &mdash; Stabber (talk) 01:00, 12 April 2006 (CDT)


 * It's an Occam's Razor argument: either one word in one skill is wrong, or at least half a dozen skill descriptions are wrong, or all skill descriptions are wrong (not to mention the dark/shadow symmetry, which has already been alluded to). --130.58 01:02, 12 April 2006 (CDT)


 * The problem with the whole "all Holy skills ignore armor" thing is that JI doesn't do any damage in and of itself. It's impossible for it to ignore armor or be affected by armor because it has no damage value associated with it. All it does is change weapon damage type, and no base weapon damage has ever completely ignored armor. So I don't know why anyone expects JI to make weapons armor-ignoring, especially as that would make 20% armor penetration redundant. -Savio 01:20, 12 April 2006 (CDT)


 * This is a delicate terminological minuet. Is it the weapon that ignores armor, or is it the damage? I say the damage, which makes the question of whether JI causes armor ignoring damage (to occur) or not relevant. &mdash; Stabber (talk) 01:23, 12 April 2006 (CDT)


 * All other skills ignore or don't ignore armor based on damage type. Without extensive trial and error, the only reason I know Fireball doesn't go through armor because it does fire damage. Moreover, Smite goes through a weapon, but it overrides the weapon's base type and does a fixed amount of holy damage. I think this is strong evidence that it's about the damage type, not the weapon used. So, we have one example of holy damage being done by a weapon and ignoring armor, many examples of holy damage ignoring armor, an example of a damage type that's just like holy but doesn't ignore armor, and a skill that would work exactly as expected if you just replaced "holy" with "light"... I think this evidence is, well, rather overwhelming.
 * You're basically asking us to throw away a whole system that works pretty much flawlessly except for one skill description, just for the sake of making that skill description not be wrong (and, as we know, some skill descriptions are just wrong - e.g. the way Thrill of Victory would sometimes heal you - which wasn't fixed for something like an entire year). While I, too, dislike the vagueness of JI, I don't think your hypothesis is valid: so far, based on everything anyone has ever said on Guildwiki about this matter, it seems we can either we explain it away as light damage or we can't explain it at all; every time someone trots out another explanation, it ultimately fails because of some major exception somewhere. --130.58 01:41, 12 April 2006 (CDT)
 * I'd like you to explain physical damage types to me then. Base weapon damage, regardless of type, has always taken into account armor, but damage from attack skills without fail ignore armor. Smite is classifed as an attack skill also, the only non-Warrior or Ranger attack skill.
 * I split off this discussion to its own topic because I almost deleted Karlos' message below. -Savio 02:13, 12 April 2006 (CDT)
 * Well, you're certainly making me lean toward "no hypothesis" rather than "JI = light" here. --130.58 02:19, 12 April 2006 (CDT)


 * When you say "damge from attack skills without fail ignore armor", I assume you are talking about the bonus damage from attack skills such as Savage Shot. In that case, the GuildWiki unimind has decided that these should not even be factored into the armor portion of the damage equation. (See damage for what the orthodoxy currently believes.) In other words, there is the so-called "base damage" (the term so selected because of the various skills that talk about "base damage reduction") that meets armor, and there are a plethora of shifts, enhancers and multipliers that are counted afterwards. Standard caveat being that this is a descriptive account based on (some semblance of) the scientific method, i.e., a theory that has a lot of experimental backup and can make fairly accurate predictions. &mdash; Stabber (talk) 02:24, 12 April 2006 (CDT)


 * Yes, I understand and accept the basic damage equation, although I feel there are several problems with the Damage page's ways of describing its functions. (From what it implies, physical and elemental damage don't ignore armor in contrast to special and other damage, which is false according to the above. There are some other issues with order of operations and absorption, but that's another problem entirely.) There are two different ways damage ignores armor: through the "x additional damage" a la attacks, and skills that just flat-out deal the damage they state regardless of armor, like Chaos Storm. I don't see how JI is supposed to take weapon damage, a base damage, and turn it into either of those. -Savio 03:05, 12 April 2006 (CDT)


 * You keep bringing up "weapon damage", but I think that term is poorly defined. There is physical damage, which can be modified to fire damage by GC or a fiery mod and still be caused by weapons. Take the example that 130.58 pointed out above, Smite. It mutates the damage type dealt by the weapon to holy damage (just as Judge's Insight claims to do). The difference is that Smite fixes the damage dealt also, whereas JI leaves it up to the weapon and user to select the amount of base damage (of type holy!). Incidentally, what in the damage article indicates that fire and physical damage ignore armor? What issues do you see with the order of operation? &mdash; Stabber (talk) 03:15, 12 April 2006 (CDT)


 * ...I think I deleted my last response when I responded to the Arena topic. Anyhow, I say weapon damage, but it's much better defined both ingame and here as attack damage. There are two parts to attack damage:
 * Base damage, which comes from combat attacks and is equal to a number randomly picked from the damage range listed on the current weapon.
 * Skill damage, which comes from attack skills and is equal to the listed number in the skill. It can be listed as "+x damage", "additional x damage", "x more damage", or even just "x damage".
 * The former is affected by armor, the latter ignores it. The total attack damage for most attack skills is equal to base damage + skill damage. A few skills, generally the "x damage" skills with a few exceptions, have total attack damage equal to just their skill damage. Smite is one of those. So now you have the problem of explaining why roughly half the damage from attack skills ignore armor while the other half doesn't if you try to resolve armor-ignoring damage through types. You'd have to include as an additional exception that attack skills cause Physical and Elemental type damage to ignore armor. It starts to become needlessly complicated to try to assign armor-ignoring properties to damage types rather than damage sources.
 * The Damage article all but states that Physical and Elemental damage are affected by armor, as it states that "Skills dealing (Holy, Light, and Typeless damage) ignore armor (see exception below). It also makes exceptions for Whirling Defense and Dust Trap, which makes the norm seem to be that Physical and Elemental damage are affected by armor. -Savio 16:21, 12 April 2006 (CDT)


 * I don't disagree with your analysis in general, except to note that JI, WD and DT are anomalies, i.e., exceptions to an otherwise consistent pattern. I prefer this to the "every skill is a unique snowflake" analysis, even though the latter is obviously more descriptively accurate. About the second point, I was responding to your comment "From what it implies, physical and elemental damage don't ignore armor in contrast to special and other damage, which is false according to the above", i.e., I thought you were accusing the damage article of implying that physical and elemental damage do not meet armor. If this was a misreading of your statement, then my apologies. &mdash; Stabber (talk) 16:30, 12 April 2006 (CDT)

WD and DT are anomalies that don't follow any normal rules, I probably shouldn't have brought them up as they'll never fit into any theory. With JI you're trying to say that Holy/Light type determines armor ignorance. If we make that assumption, then how does that apply to physical and elemental types? The fact is it doesn't at all; the base attack damage will always be affected by armor, and the skill attack damage will ignore armor, regardless of type. However, if we go with armor ignorance by source, then we have base attack damage which is affected by armor, skill attack damage which ignores armor, a group of skills that is affected, and a group of skills that ignores armor. -Savio 18:01, 13 April 2006 (CDT)


 * I'm probably repeating myself, but what you call "base attack damage" and "skill attack damage" are not well defined damage types. Take Fireball. Does it do "base attack damage" or "skill attack damage"? How does one tell without testing it out? The GuildWiki prefers typing damage based on the kinds of damage that are explicitly named in the game, i.e., "physical damage" (with many subtypes), "elemental damage" (with many subtypes), and some other damage types that are not categorizable. This theory of damage types is supported by one further important fact: there are many skills that differentiate between these damage types; eg. Mantra of Flame for the fire damage type. As far as I can tell, there is no skill that differentiates "base damage type" and "skill damage type", as you call them. There are some observed properties of damage reduction, but to the best of my knowledge these are undocumented by Anet. &mdash; Stabber (talk) 18:09, 13 April 2006 (CDT)


 * One further point: the term "attack" in there is misleading. For instance, spells aren't considered attacks (i.e., Empathy is not triggered by them). Therefore, even if we pick your terms, we should not say that spells do any type of "attack damage". &mdash; Stabber (talk) 18:12, 13 April 2006 (CDT)


 * When I refer to "base attack damage" or "skill attack damage", those are two components of attack damage; they aren't two separate damage types but two components of an attack. When I say attack, I mean attack as the game defines it and not any source of damage like Fireball. Using the damage equation for an attack, base attack damage is BD, equal to a number picked from the damage range for the weapon or the damage range for the pet. Skill attack damage is a component of DShift, along with other modifiers like Strength of Honor; for ordinary swinging of a weapon, there is no skill attack damage. (Alternatively, you could treat skill attack damage as an additional armor-ignoring damage and then add it to the base attack damage later.) Attacks are the only source of damage that have two components for a single damage number. For any source of non-attack damage like the aforementioned Fireball, BD is equal to the damage of that attack and it does not have any additional source of damage.
 * Of course no skill differentiates between base attack damage and skill attack damage; that's what armor does. Armor affects one but not the other. The question is not how do skills differentiate damage, as they can differentiate between either skill type (Gladiator's Defense) or damage type (Mantra of Flame). The question here is, how do armor and the AE differentiate damage? According to how armor differentiates between one component of an attack and the other, and both components of an attack are of the same damage type, it doesn't care about damage type.
 * To show my point: let's pretend JI does make attacks Light-type damage, and Light-type damage is affected by armor as you theorize. What happens to my Eviscerate then, which is doing +42 damage? Is the +42 damage, which is now Light-type, affected by armor or not? -Savio 10:27, 14 April 2006 (CDT)


 * Can you try typing up your formulation in User:Savio/Damage? I really don't understand the point of separating out "skill attack damage" from DShift.  BTW, regarding "the base attack damage will always be affected by armor, and the skill attack damage will ignore armor, regardless of type.", none of the "skill attack damage" are ever explicitly typed by the skill descriptions.  Stating that they have the same damage type as the base attack is an assumption.  An understandable assumption, but an assumption nonetheless.  Thus there is no consistency problem between considering armor-ignoringness as damage type based versus the fact that skill attack damage ignores armor. -PanSola 12:46, 15 April 2006 (CDT)
 * On the JI note, is the +42 damage armor penetrating? I did not test explicitly, but my assumption is that the +42 damage does NOT penetrate armor, and is NOT light/holy damage.  It remains untyped and not affected by the effects of JI at all.  It is a damage modifier, not part of the attack that gets modified by JI. -PanSola 13:08, 15 April 2006 (CDT)


 * First, I don't understand the point of separating skill attack damage from DShift either, I want them together. But the current DShift description states: ""x additional damage" is NOT a damage modifier. It's a separate damage.", which is what I want to resolve.
 * I haven't found a way yet to test for the damage type of skill attack damage because of the way the game treats damage; currently -0 damage is still considered to be damage. However, simple skill attacks are relatively easy to test since they don't have a base attack damage. Aside from Smite which has a set Holy type, all others take the damage type of the weapon. So how do you treat the consistency problem with that particular group of attack skills: what happens if you make them "Light-type," as you claim JI does? They certainly aren't starting to be affected by armor.
 * My point about JI was that it wouldn't matter if the +42 damage was armor penetrating. Any skill attack damage - any additional damage in an attack skill - will ignore armor; that +42 is +42 even if the target had 300 AL. If it ignores armor, it doesn't matter if the armor is now 48 AL instead of 60 AL. A similar case is Penetrating Blow: the +21 damage from it already ignores armor and doesn't get anything from the 20% AP, it's the base skill damage that benefits.
 * Which is my point with "Holy damage always ignores armor" theory: if JI is supposed to make attacks ignore armor through Holy damage, why would there be a 20% AP tacked on that did nothing? If JI is supposed to make attacks not ignore armor through Light damage, why do some skills ignore armor even though they're Light-type? Although Arenanet is known to be atrocious with skill descriptions, I don't see how they screwed up with JI at all. -Savio 01:37, 18 April 2006 (CDT)
 * "But the current DShift description states: ""x additional damage" is NOT a damage modifier" oh THAT. That's because it shows up as a different number and IS calculated as a separate damage.  "You deal +x damage" and "You deal x additional damage" is different.  Everything is moot.  The +42 damage is NOT "x additional damage", it is "+x damage".  I hope this clarification makes the rest of your response moot.  BTW, whick skills ignore armor even though they are light type?  I wasn't aware of any. -PanSola 04:46, 18 April 2006 (CDT)

Damage equation issues
moved to Talk:Damage

Obelisk Arena
To answer your question about doing that article, I would suggest you name it after it's match type.. i.e. Ascalon arena (Obelisk). the priest in the Great Temple of Balthazar calls them "Obelisk" matches so I guess that's what they are.

the question I have is whether to name this "Hero's Crypt" also the like the deathmatch one or Ascalon Arena. --Karlos 01:39, 12 April 2006 (CDT)


 * I'm thinking of leaving it as Ascalon Arena for now, since we don't know the official name of it. Also, I just realized we're missing the original CA map, the one with the bridge in the middle and the swamp area. I don't know what that one is called either.
 * At any rate, all of the arena articles have to be rewritten. -Savio 06:38, 12 April 2006 (CDT)
 * Nix that, I actually do know what it's called and it's already in the list: D'Alessio Arena. Still needs to be rewritten though. -Savio 07:17, 12 April 2006 (CDT)

Damage
How I would write the Damage equation article:

Effective Damage = (((BD × DAttack × AE) + DShift) × DMult) + DRev

BD
Base damage.
 * For an attack, equal to a number in the damage range for the weapon or pet.
 * For a non-attack skill, equal to the number listed.

DAttack
Multiplier for attacks only. Examples: Customization, Weapon modifiers, Life Attunement
 * For non-attacks, equal to 1.
 * For attacks, equal to the product of all applicable factors.

AE
Armor effect. OR
 * For armor-ignoring damage, equal to 1.
 * For armor-affected damage, equal to 2(EffDL-EffAL)/40.
 * For armor-ignoring skill damage (attack or non-attack), equal to 1.
 * For base attack and armor-affected skill damage, equal to 2(EffDL-EffAL)/40.

DShift
Additions and subtractions to damage. Examples: Strength of Honor, Absorption, Attack skills
 * Standard value equal to 0.
 * Equal to the sum of all applicable numbers.

DMult
Multiplier for all damage. Examples: Frenzy and Aura of the Lich.
 * Standard value equal to 1.
 * Equal to the product of all applicable factors.

DRev
Subtracts an amount of damage and heals target for same amount. Examples: Reversal of Fortune, Mark of Protection
 * Standard value equal to 0.
 * If there is more than one number for DRev, the largest number is used.
 * Healing is calculated as a separate number and is not subtracted from any remaining damage.

Comments
1. I agree that the generalization of the term attack is a bad idea. That's one part of the old article that I never finished cleaning up.

2. DScale vs DAttack. The current situations where this factor pops up there is always enough context (being a mod of the weapon, or saying "in combat" in skill description) to understand them to apply to actual combat attack only. Thus to keep things flexible for furture possibility, I'd like to stay away from manually wording it too specifically. Campaign 3 might come out with a hex that says "Your spells deal 20% less damage", and if the stacking rules and order of operations with other modifiers are all teh same, I'd prefer to avoid modifying the article.

3. I do not see the necessity or advantage of separating attack skills from non-attack skills when doing base-damage. I see it as a demerit to unnessarily increase the complexity.

3a. Complex skill attack. It just contains a Base Damage component and a DShift component, pure and simple.

3b. Simple skill attack. It's just a Base Damage in some cases, and DShift in other cases, depending on the condition specified in the skill description, pure and simple. -PanSola 05:17, 18 April 2006 (CDT)