Talk:Index of skill lists

I agree with the merge --Hewus 12:26, 14 Aug 2005 (EST)

If you want a merge, discuss it here, don't marr the article with it. The merge template falls under "Ollj's undiscussed additions to wiki policy," and I'm systematically removing it. Anyone wishing to propose a merge tag/category should do so on Talk:Main Page. &mdash;Tanaric 22:03, 16 Aug 2005 (EST)

I propose this page take on a new name/identity of "Index of Skill Lists" or simply "Skill Lists". --Rezyk 13:42, 14 Oct 2005 (EST)


 * I guess I'll start moving it in this direction and see what the reaction is... --Rezyk 11:20, 25 October 2005 (EST)


 * Why do you want to do this? Perhaps if you make a case for the request people will participate. As it stands now, all we have is that you wish to do this. --Karlos 16:50, 25 October 2005 (EST)


 * I'm not out to get participation unless there is an objection. =) The basic reason is: it would make for a generally better reference page. --Rezyk 17:21, 26 October 2005 (EST)


 * I'm fine with that. I think all it needs is List of skills by type. --Karlos 22:53, 26 October 2005 (EST)

why so many elite lists?
Okay, I just don't get why we need these "elite skills by locations lists." See Elite_Warrior_Skill_Locations. These seem completely redundant. We've got the very nice Elite skills list which allows you to click whatever skill your actually interested in and find out where it is. We've also got the location pages themselves which crossreference all the different skills you can find in the area. These two things alone, allow us to look up skills by class/name AND by location. Not to mention the regular profession quick reference pages (like Warrior_Skills_Quick_Reference) that list the elites along with the regular skills. So what is it that these additional "elite skills of x profession by location pages" really add except even more places to update changes? Although i respect the amount of work that someone put into these, it doesn't seem like having all the locations on a single page is really worth the data duplication. --Squeg 01:43, 29 October 2005 (EST)


 * More never decided stuff. Look at the talk page for elite skills list. --Fyren 06:05, 29 October 2005 (EST)


 * Hmmmm... An interesting history.  I'll comment there, I guess.  But i have to say, I really like the Elite skills list as it is now, without locations/bosses to clutter it up.  There are two ways people approach lookin for elites... they say where can i look for skill x, so they look up skill x to see.  Or they say what skills can I find in location alpha, and they check alpha's location (or mission) page to see what's there.  Anything else seems like overkill. --Squeg 07:24, 29 October 2005 (EST)


 * I like the list by location quite much. In fact, I think it would be very useful to extend to non-elite skills that can be captured before they become available from quests/trainers. I could think of Balthazar's Aura, Dryder's Defenses or Aftershock in that category. What do you think? I would be glad to add the ones I know if other people think it is a good idea. --SDC 07:55, 3 November 2005 (EST)


 * Hi SDC, could you clarify: are you talking about the "elite skills by Capture Location" list at Index of Skill Lists, or the lists linked at Elite skill locations? --Rezyk 08:42, 3 November 2005 (EST)


 * Hi Rezyk, my comment was not very clear indeed... I meant the one at Index of Skill Lists. This could instead be called skills by Capture Location. Then, in the location page, a section could be added for normal skills as well as elite skills. Of course, to avoid clutter, only skills that really make sense to acquire should be listed. I modify Aurora Glade to show you what I mean, feel free to roll back if you don't like it. --SDC 09:06, 3 November 2005 (EST)


 * Ahh, I see. In case there was any confusion, this section of discussion was about the other lists.  For your suggestion, I think you might want to bring it up in GuildWiki_talk:Style_and_formatting/Locations instead, as it is really about a change to Location pages.  (Personally, I think it is a good idea.) Also you might want to see GuildWiki_talk:Style_and_formatting/Skills and User_talk:Hamster, which discusses that capture data on Skill pages.  --Rezyk 10:30, 3 November 2005 (EST)

Skill Lists by Profession
I really preferred the bulletted list over the new one Rezyk just put in. The icons are pretty, but the "quick reference links (the ones i absolutely find more useful than any of the others) are way to hard to find. I don't care at all about those location links, as stated above, and the category page doesn't offer nearly the information that the quick ref pages do. I want to go back.  Anyone else?  --Squeg 07:47, 29 October 2005 (EST)


 * What are your thoughts on this new version? I took out the location links as there's discussion about deleting those articles anyways. --Rezyk 07:53, 29 October 2005 (EST)


 * It's better, but i'd really like the so called "quick reference" links to be the primary link for the profession. It offers a lot more information than just the category.  If we really need the category links, then i propose doing something like (category) after the quick ref link and renaming those links to something other than "quick reference".  I'll take quick stab at it so I'm not foisting it all on you. As for removing locations, I love it.  But so far, I think i'm the only that's said as much. --Squeg 07:59, 29 October 2005 (EST)


 * I went ahead and made my suggested changes... Alternatively, we could try something like the following:

Warrior skills
 * by category
 * Elite skills by location

Ranger skills
 * by category
 * Elite skills by location

Monk skills
 * by category
 * Elite skills by location

Necromancer skills
 * by category
 * Elite skills by location

Mesmer skills
 * by category
 * Elite skills by location

Elementalist skills
 * by category
 * Elite skills by location

I'm generally fine with your new version. One thing I've also been considering is that attribute links might be worth having:
 * Monk skills (by category)
 * Divine Favor
 * Healing Prayers
 * Protection Prayers
 * Smiting Prayers

I think any vertical expansion might be best used for this instead. --Rezyk 08:27, 29 October 2005 (EST)


 * Given that these are all just really subsections of the main page and that the main page already has a table of contents at the top to allow you to jump to the attribute you want without even incurring a page load, I don't really see taking up space listing all the attributes again on this page. --Squeg 11:18, 29 October 2005 (EST)


 * Well, it would also be a way to support links to the attribute skills categories. --Rezyk 11:29, 29 October 2005 (EST)

Pending the discussion of their deletion, I readded the "elites with location" in the form of a link to Elite skill locations. --Rezyk 08:42, 29 October 2005 (EST)

skill categories
I took out the (category) links in this section and just linked the actual category names... I've always hated that this list didn't just link the titles anyway and once it was truncated down to (category) it just didn't make sense to seperate the link from what it was linking to like that. --Squeg 05:33, 2 November 2005 (EST)


 * I ... don't really agree with the header change from "Skill Lists by Type" to "Skill Categories". Skill Categories would also include the profession skill categories, Category:Skill stubs, Category:Monster Skills, Category:Elite Skills, etc, and I don't think that's the best direction to go. --Rezyk 06:28, 2 November 2005 (EST)


 * The header "skill lists by type" is both overly long and innaccurate. I could compromise on Skill Types instead of Skill Categories, but the word "list" does not belong. The only thing in this list are "category" pages.  By context, you can tell these are category links, because everything in the section is a category, so no need to redundantly link as whatever i really want to link to (category).


 * The "skill stubs" category obviously does NOT belong in this list because it's a made up category for use by the wiki that has nothing to do with the game itself. Elite's are included both within these categories and in their own sections below, so no need to list them again for the millionth time.  And monster skills... I don't care about a generic list of monster skills and i'd imagine that it's pretty rare that anyone else has use for one either.  If you feel strongly that because it's  "category" it should be part of this list, then add it to the end.  I don't think it makes a huge difference either way.


 * To be honest, I don't really understand why this list is here in the first place, as everything falls underneath the skills category. It would make more sense just to have one link that said, "skills by category." If that category page doesn't do a good job of listing the availabe skills subcategories, then it should be changed/updated, instead of creating a bunch of other pages to do the same job (see duplication comment below). This section has been horrendously ugly since it was added to this page. If it has to stay on this page, then it really ought to be as simplified as much as possible. Feel free to address it in another manner if you like, but what was here was the equivalent of saying "to see my really cool site, click here, when what you really ought to do is type My really cool site and let the links provide the contextual information. People do the former all the time, but that doesn't make it any less annoying.--Squeg 11:35, 2 November 2005 (EST)


 * I changed all the headers to address lengthiness/inaccuracy (although the page name is still inaccurate if one discounts categories as lists). --Rezyk 12:14, 2 November 2005 (EST)


 * Collapsing the verbosity down into the primary name is fine, except that it clashes with the links of the profession primary names. I think page-level (not just section-level) consistency is pretty important here.  Really, I'd have no problem with keeping this change if profession names also linked to category space, but I know you expressed distaste at that. --Rezyk 14:02, 2 November 2005 (EST)


 * It seems like your impression is that this section was meant to index the skill category structure, which it really wasn't. It was meant to organize all the skill lists on the site that grouped primarily by skill type, which is nicely orthogonal to the profession/attribute and acquisition method groupings (and it just turned out that they were almost all categories). If what you mean is that all the category links (including profession) don't really need to be here...I guess I can see that -- categories are meant to be naturally organized and we're starting to get there on this site. =)  I'll try making that change and see how badly I get flamed... --Rezyk 14:02, 2 November 2005 (EST)


 * Assuming a revert to the "by Type" header, I also don't care for linking these names (as is) to the categories. There ought to be some consistency in telling whether you'll get a category or table or bullet list before clicking each link, and it clashes with the profession names being links to tables. --Rezyk 06:28, 2 November 2005 (EST)

additional dupliation
While poking around in the skill categories, I ran into: Skill_type. This page does pretty much what the category list does. It tries to add some additional explanation but i'm not sure how successful that is. This page is linked from the top of the skills category page. Since we seem to be moving towards using this one page for all this information, I'm going to suggest deleting Skill type and linking to the #Skill Categories subsection of this page from the the skills category's description page. Unless of course anyone has any better ideas. --Squeg 05:33, 2 November 2005 (EST)

Mission Icons
Can we take a vote or something on the mission icons being used in the capture lists? Personally, I think they make the lists harder to read and screw up the spacing. I think icons make good bullets and table headers, but don't really belong in horizontal lists. --Squeg 06:22, 6 November 2005 (EST)

I have removed the icons and put the missions in bold instead - what do you think? --SDC 06:59, 6 November 2005 (EST)


 * Much better, although I suggest using italics instead of bold. I've been thinking that the elite and non-elite lists can be merged (since they overlap), and bold would be good to mark the locations that have elites. --Rezyk 07:04, 6 November 2005 (EST)


 * I've removed the distinction of elites, it starts at a set point (Desert), no need to bold the lower half of the list, makes the bolding useless. For missions, I opted for an asterisk. Italics mixed heavily with regular text tend to blur into the text after a while. An asterisk simply stands out without a fuss. --Karlos 13:27, 6 November 2005 (EST)

Faction skills to profession skill list
You guys think it's time too add Faction skills to the profesion skill list? or do we wait for Faction's release?
 * i have started adding Factions skills now. If most people deem that it is too early then the changes can be reverted now and copy pasted hen the next campaign comes out. Chakra 17:03 30 Mar 2006 (GMT)

Skill information layout
I just thought I'd add this here at the end. Many of the new assassin skills are chained, and it would be a great idea to label very clearly in one area what kind of skill it is. Instead of putting "dual attack" off to the right, and "off-hand attack" off to the left, sometimes off by half a page, it would be best to have, at the beginning of the skill's description something like

Off-hand attack (can only be used after lead attack).

because some of the skills are very different, and do not set up for a following attack. like

Spell (must follow a lead attack).

Thanks, I hope you read this suggestion and I hope it was helpful.