GuildWiki:Profession archetype guides

Guides, Not Builds
This proposal aims to replace Build articles by “Guides”. These Guides dictate various Roles commonly played by each of the professions. Therefore, the intention of this proposal is to expand the definition of accepted builds to allow for greater documentation for PvE vis-à-vis a  "Guides, not Builds" platform.

(As per GW:NOB, original builds will be relegated to the user space in favor of guides.)

A common misconception is that this policy is entirely devoted to "effective profession guides." In fact, the primary goal of this policy is the creation of role or archetype guides.

How will GuildWiki benefit from this proposal?

 * Guides will more closely follow the “documentation Wiki” format by sticking to universal understandings on what a given Profession does or does not tend to do
 * Users will more easily make informed decisions about their character, thanks to greatly enhanced simplicity and cohesion within the Guides section
 * Guides will allow users access to information without wading through potentially biased documentation and other problems found in Build articles
 * Popular Roles in the game will be much more widely documented; as it stands, very few are
 * No voting! (And consequently, significantly less GW:NPA violations among other things)

What exactly is a Role?
A Role is an irreducible foundation that an original build stems from (e.g., an original W/Mo Tank Build stems from the Role of Warrior Tank). Thus, Roles documented in guides aren’t limited to extremely large categories, nor do they exclude “unsuccessful/outdated” Roles; Roles are any broad category of playing type. Each profession has several typical Roles that it may play in the course of the game. A Monk is typically a "Healer", a Warrior a "Tank", and so on. Guides will attempt to document the most frequented Roles. It is these Roles that will be expanded in Guides to highlight necessary aspects of each Role (such as basic skills and general attribute ranges).

What if one Role can be played by several Professions?
Certain Roles, like the Role of the Farmer or Runner, can be played by many of the different Professions. These Multi-Profession Roles will be addressed in several ways, depending on how much specific information is necessary for them to be documented. Effective Farming Guides are expected for most Professions, for example, and these will be found as sub-headers in a Profession’s respective “Effective Profession Guide” section. Individual, successful builds will remain separate from the guides as per the Implementation section.

How is a Profession's Role Guide designed?

 * 1) A Role Template (i.e. a bare bones build template including only basic, necessary skills)
 * 2) Major Variants
 * 3) General Usage
 * 4) Tips for Playing the Role
 * 5) Other necessary information
 * 6) Different guides will need different information to properly document all of the necessary information; the details of what goes into each specific page may be decided on a case by case basis

How do we implement this policy?

 * 1) Expand/Edit existing "Effective Profession" guides
 * 2) Create separate guides for accepted Profession Roles (see Role guide project for more information and to help expand this idea.)
 * 3) Document any specific, accepted PvE builds (ex. SS Necromancer)
 * 4) Relegate "Original" user Builds to the user space
 * 5) *Allow users to affix user build tags that allow original builds to be linked to Guides

How do we organize Guides?
Each successive guide essentially falls into a sub-category of a broader guide. For example, an SS Necromancer (which is an accepted, specific PvE build) might fall under a category like "Curses Necromancer" which would then be a category of the "Effective Necromancer Guide."

Thus, the idea is to create a tiered system which limits the possibility of bloated pages and allows quick access. Similar to the system on the build namespace, if a player wants access to a PvE, Warrior Farming Build. Rather than searching through a single guide, that player can look at the General Farming Guide or General Warrior Farming Guide as well as the individual builds.

Examples
As an example, the Effective ranger guide lists the many types of rangers. Each of these can be explained with a general role guide. Some already have been. Look at the trapper entry and you can see a link to the General trapping guide which explains the ins and outs of trapping with a couple example builds. This is the closest version to a guide. Now if you look at the interrupter type it links to a [Build:R/any General Interrupter|build/guide] that is a hybrid of a build and a guide that allows the user to create a build as well as learn the ins and outs of each skill from the role they are playing, highlighting the typical base builds and typical base stats for each chapter and possible secondary professions.

Either version works well to help the player to create their own builds and to also learn the strengths and weaknesses of many skills that may work in the role they are playing.

Conclusion
Both of these above examples demonstrate how we can replace the current builds section and retain vital information while casting aside the various problems associated with the current build namespace. Since these guides would be treated as articles and not the product of any individual user, they can easily be updated/changed over time and can focus on presenting factual information rather than individual conjecture.