User talk:Savio/Archive01

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)


 * I thought you were including the other types, like "x more damage"; my mistake. The "additional damage" skills are still worth looking at. For "x additional damage," Smite, Aftershock, and the Mind spells list damage separately; Winnowing adds them together. For "+x additional damage," the only skill I see with it is Melandru's Assault, which seems to be behaving weirdly; it looks like it adds them together and lists as a separate damage at the same time. For "additional x damage," Kindle Arrows, Deathly Chill, Lightning Touch, Holy Strike, and the Conjures are separate numbers; Order of Pain adds the numbers together; for Swift Chop, the "additional" part is misleading as that's the only damage it deals when it's Blocked. The sole "additional +x damage," Scavenger Strike adds the numbers together. And then there are still Factions skills to test, like Standing Slash.
 * The skills that ignore armor even though they are made "Light type" through JI are: Swift Chop (when Blocked), Irresistible Blow (when Blocked), Griffon's Sweep (when Evaded), Seeking Blade (when Evaded), Distracting Shot, and Concussion Shot. -Savio 11:47, 18 April 2006 (CDT)
 * Um, so you are claiming the damage Swift Chop does when blocked ignores armor? Unless the anon user on January 4th was going with 16 Axe Mastery and didn't realize that being part of the progression table, I would say that person's comment served as a strong evidence that Swift Chop's damage does NOT ignore armor when blocked.  I am making the similar assumption with the other warrior skills.
 * Finally, thanks for collecting which skills say "additional number" but show the damage as one number and vice versa.  I'll be reporting those to Anet as consistency problems in skill descriptions and see if they will do anything about it.  In the mean while we should mark on the wiki (either explicitly stating whether damages are one or two numbers, or assume Additional means two while +x means one and then only mark the exceptions; I prefer the latter approach). -PanSola 12:44, 18 April 2006 (CDT)


 * If you can't reproduce it, don't believe it. The anonymous user from Talk:Swift Chop most likely hit with a 16 Axe Mastery attack or wasn't blocked. His lone statement without any proof or additional testing doesn't come close to proving anything. I'm not claiming anything with these skills, I'm stating this as fact. I've tested this for months now in various places: the Isle of the Nameless, the Doppelganger, Kryta, Ascalon... all of them show that these skills are armor-ignoring with the appropriate prerequisites. Despite the fact that I'm normally hitting a Whiptail Devourer with a sword for 60-some damage, when it evades my Seeking Blade it takes only 16 damage. (The Doppelganger's being weird though; it's doesn't have any attributes in Axe Mastery, Swordsmanship, or Hammer Mastery - possibly a byproduct of being able to use any weapon skill.)
 * It's incredibly easy to test this, so you don't really need to assume anything. The Master of Axes has Swift Chop, the Master of Hammers has Irresistible Blow, Tengu Caromi Brave in Kryta have both Swift Chop and Seeking Blade. Losaru Bladehands in the Desert have Shield Stance, Whiptail Devourers have Lightning Reflexes. Or you could just test with the Doppelganger. -Savio 17:52, 18 April 2006 (CDT)
 * Thanks for the info. Ok, here's my formulation:
 * "Additional damage" does NOT constitute an attack. Therefore, things like Empathy do not hurt you twice if you are dealing additional damage, just once from the blocked/evaded attack that dealt 0 damage (need verification on Empathy's behavior).  And since additional damage isn't attck damage, JI naturally doesn't affect it.
 * Let me know if there is any problem or unnecessary complexity with this forumulation. The term "additional damage" here strictly deals with the "separate number" type of damage, ignoring exceptions where skill description says "additional damage" but it gets added to the base damage as one number.  -PanSola 18:06, 18 April 2006 (CDT)

Additional damage doesn't constitute an additional attack, true - they're not part of the attack damage. JI doesn't affect them - true, because JI affects only attack damage. Things like Empathy don't trigger twice - also true, but the reason is because Empathy, Spiteful Spirit and the like trigger on swing or fire, not on contact or damage. Attacking is different than hitting. The Block/Evade attacks - Swift Chop, Irresistible Blow, Griffon's Sweep, Seeking Blade - and the two Ranger armor-ignoring attacks - Distracting Shot and Concussion Shot - have nothing to do with the additional damage skills. A normal Blocked or Evaded attack do not deal -0 damage, it doesn't do damage at all. A -0 damage attack will trigger Balthazar's Spirit, but an Evaded attack will not. Swift Chop is the only one to mislabel its Block damage as "additional damage," when that's the only damage it deals. Every other skill is correct in its description. -Savio 18:27, 18 April 2006 (CDT)
 * Oops my bad, wasn't being careful. Are you currently researching whether these damage have armor penetration?  My guess is they really aren't damage from the attack anyways, so JI doesn't affect them one way or the other (damage type or armor penetration).  -PanSola 18:55, 18 April 2006 (CDT)


 * They don't and can't have armor penetration, because AP is absolutely worthless to damage that already ignores armor. If you place the damage in DShift (or make them armor-ignoring damage), the armor and AP become irrelevant.
 * As far as JI not affecting damage from simple skill attacks, my first tests are showing conflicting results. Swift Chop under a Greater Conflagration/Mark of Rodgort setup triggers fine (i.e. the target becomes Burning), but the Orders don't trigger (no additional damage is shown), as far as I can tell. I have to play around with the Orders first and see exactly what they trigger under. -Savio 10:01, 22 April 2006 (CDT)
 * Blah, forgot they ignore armor. So, have you verified whether those armor-ignoring damages gets type-converted by JI?  My guess is they really aren't damage from the attack anyways, so JI doesn't affect them one way or the other. -PanSola 22:41, 22 April 2006 (CDT)
 * The Swift Chop difference in behavior can be rationalized as thus: the damage dealt when blocked is phyiscal damage, so Greater Conflag converts it. However, it's not a damage from the attack, so Order of Vampire doesn't work (that physical damage isn't caused by you "hitting" the foe, the additional damage is a non-attack damage). -PanSola 22:45, 22 April 2006 (CDT)
 * I think I figured out why the Orders didn't trigger: they specifically state they activate on hit, and since technically the main attacks are blocked/evaded, Swift Chop is not actually "hitting" even though it does damage. I'll have to play around more with it though and find skills that trigger on attacks but not on hits.
 * The main problem with testing JI specifically with the block/evade attacks is that there is no way to test it outside of a PvP battle, since there is no undead that blocks/evades melee attacks, and no area that has enemies with both JI and a block/evade attack. Undead Prince Rurik does not take double damage from Holy, which was a big waste of my time. It might have to do with him being a boss; I don't recall if any of the other undead bosses take double damage from Holy. I'll just wait for Factions to come out so we can have hot 1v1 testing. -Savio 22:57, 22 April 2006 (CDT)

Swift Chop
You just reported results that proved the blocked damage of Swift Chop is BOTH physical damage (when the weapon does not have elemental upgrades) and ignore armor, right? -PanSola 23:15, 22 April 2006 (CDT)
 * I'm certain on the ignore armor, but not on the physical damage component. I'm retesting it with a Fiery Axe this time and MoR isn't triggering with a blocked Swift Chop. I'll have to get another Ranger and try again with Greater Conflag to make sure. -Savio 01:15, 23 April 2006 (CDT)
 * Hunch - try Icy Axe, Mark of Rodgort, AND Greater Conflagration. The conjecture being tested is that a blocked Swift Chop deals physical damage REGARDLESS of the axe's regular damage type.  This makes some kind of sense (at least the ignoring axe type part), if you consider that the blocked damage is not damage coming from the attack of the axe. -PanSola 01:23, 23 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
moved to User:Savio/Damage and User talk:Savio/Damage