Talk:List of skill anomalies

Martyr
Yes, the wording seems ambiguous but I think they thought the meaning would be clear because the durations of conditions never stack. I wouldn't mind accurate and clear descriptions though. --Ishmaeel 19:59, 2 March 2006 (CST)

Quick Shot
This skill was fixed, but the arrow is still shot at double speed, which is not indicated in the skill descrition. I hope you don't mind me editing your list. --Gem 03:08, 5 March 2006 (CST)
 * Ups. I forgot that the skills activation time is the time that shooting the arrow takes. This skill works just as it is supposed. --Gem 03:16, 5 March 2006 (CST)
 * I have no way to test this now (experiments running on my Linux desktop at work, so can't boot to Windows and fire up GW), so let me just ask you: does QS both activate twice as fast and fire an arrow that moves twice as fast? Or did they add the second effect and remove the first? 18:46, 5 March 2006 (CST)
 * You have propably tested this by now. The arrow moves twice as fast and it also is fired faster. Shouldn't this be how it works, as the activation time is 1 second, but the normal refire of the bows is 2+ seconds --Gem 19:50, 5 March 2006 (CST)

Promote to full article?
Should I move this out of my userpage into some more prominent location? 21:46, 2 March 2006 (CST)
 * I think this deserved its own article. --Gem 03:08, 5 March 2006 (CST)
 * Aight, done 18:44, 5 March 2006 (CST)

Grenth's Balance
I don't understand the newly added 'bug' in Grenth's Balance. The description says: 'If target foe has more health than you' so there shouldn't be any effect when the caster has more health than the target. I will remove the skills from the list. If something else was intended, please explain. 17:15, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * There are two anomalies. The first is that if you have more life than the opponent, you lose life and they gain it.  This isn't stated in the skill description, and it's unclear if it's intended to be this way or not.  The second is that this behaviour doesn't happen if you're currently at full health.  This difference in behaviour is most likely a bug. --adeyke 17:23, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * Check the in-game description for the skill. I think I remember it saying something like: "if caster has more health than target then this skill has no effect". Shandy 17:25, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * See User talk:68.41.210.198, and please don't revert things that you are unsure about. 17:26, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * As I understand it, GB has an "undocumented" feature of damaging the caster, if xe has more health than the target (thus, "balancing" the caster and the target). However, this hidden effect does not come into play if the caster has full health. Maybe the 'anomaly' could be re-worded to state that either the hidden effect of damaging the caster or its failure to trigger when caster is fully healed must be unintentional by the devs.--Ishmaeel 17:28, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * The revert wasn't really out of place here. The bug isn't that you don't take damage when at full health. The bug is that you lose health when you have more than the target. The description I removed described the situation where the bug didn't occur, not the bug itself. 17:36, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * But we don't know which one exactly is the bug. The word "Balance" tells me that their intent was really level-out the healths of the caster and the target but forgot to reflect this in the skill desc. It could very well be the other way 'round, though. --Ishmaeel 17:39, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * There are two separate "bug"s here. One is an unmentioned feature of the skill that the "balance" backfires if the caster has more health than the target. The other is a bug in this feature for the case where the caster is at max health. If you wanted to make this clear, please edit the text instead of simply removing all mention of GB with a revert. 17:40, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * I will edit the text now then. Sorry for the whole mess. I should not make these edits just after waking up. Soory once more. 17:41, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * No worries Gem. I'm sure Stabber isn't as cranky as he sounds :P. Shandy 17:44, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * "She". And I just woke up too. Where the heck is my damn coffee cup? 17:45, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * No offense taken :). I actually had a swedish lesson before the edits, which made me even more tired. (Note: I live at my school, so I just walked stairs up from my bed to the lesson and continued sleeping :D ) Atleast I could write english, not swedish. 17:50, 15 March 2006 (CST)

Illusion of Weakness
I just discovered this last night, but didn't have a chance to test it out properly, but it appears that IoW doesn't trigger on degen. So if you health degens past 25%, the enchantment will not end and you will not receive X health. I'm not sure if this can be considered broken, but it's certainly unexpected: the skill description does mention damage though, which is mostly considered to be different from degen. Shandy 17:22, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * This has always been the case with this skill. Degen is not considered damage. Neither is life saccing, nor life "donation" spells like Infuse Health, which also don't trigger IoW. 17:29, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * I think the "...if damage drops your health..." part in the description is clear enough. A note concerning non-damage ways of losing health would be handy in the skill article, methinks.--Ishmaeel 17:34, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * Agreed. 17:44, 15 March 2006 (CST)

duration stacking
condition/hex stacks never add their duration, so I don't see the issue with Maytr. If you get two ppl casting Backfire on you, staggered 3 sec apart, you are only hexed for 13 seconds total, not 20.-PanSola 17:33, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * That is irrelevant to the objection, which is all about the wording of the skill desc. They could have simply not mentioned duration at all and there would be no problem. But they go to the trouble of saying "and their durations", which leads one to wonder if they meant something special. 17:34, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * Conditions have a "default" duration. If you get burning on you, it most likely last for 3 seconds etc.  Some skills that cause conditions specify their duration, but otherwise the default is used.  So, if you just transferred a burning from an ally who has been suffering from it for 2 seconds, do you get 1 sec of burning or 3?  Without any additional description on the duration I actually would assume I get 3 seconds of burning. -PanSola 17:43, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * PanSola beat me to it - the wording "and their durations" is not entirely pointless and misleading. I think they really did not think it would look ambiguous because one can never have two instances of the same hex or condition on them and durations never stack. When they said "conditions", they must have assumed it would only be interpreted as "different types of conditions". As I said earlier, I wouldn't mind the addition of a simple clarifying sentence to the description, though. --Ishmaeel 17:48, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * I seriously doubt that's true. Many burning skills (Incendiary Bonds, Mark of Rodgort, Rodgort's Invocation, Incendiary Arrows, etc.) have a variable duration of burning. Same for poison, dazed, etc. Now it is true that there are some skills that cause conditions for fixed durations, but that is a property of the skill rather than the condition. 17:50, 15 March 2006 (CST)

Aura of Faith
Seems quite logical to me. COP removes enchantment and then heals, as per the skill description ("for each lost...", so they are already gone when you get healed) --theeth 20:06, 28 March 2006 (CST)
 * Yup, I don't think this is an anomaly. 20:24, 28 March 2006 (CST)
 * Absolutely. Effects on skills happen in the order listed.  First you lose enchantments, including Aura of Faith, then you are healed.   Of course there's no bonus from AoF, it's gone. --JoDiamonds 02:14, 29 March 2006 (CST)

Not Really Anomalous Stuff

 * There seem to be some things here which just don't seem anomalous in any way (for instance, Distracting Blow says that you deal no damage. However, damage bonus such as Order of Pain will deal damage with this attack. Additionally, this attack can be blocked and evaded.. It's an attack.  Shouldn't it follow the rules of Order of Pain, and blocking and evading?  It seems like these things could be clarification notes on the skill's individual pages, but they seem to follow all the stated rules of the game.  They are just in a different category than things which apparently break the rules, yet don't say so (Whirling Defense, Dust Trap, etc.)  Maybe the skills are confusing to some people, but they are internally consistent with all the "rules" of GuildWars.  I'll make these changes, but figured I should make a note here since people might disagree or wonder why I'm doing it.  --JoDiamonds 02:28, 29 March 2006 (CST)


 * If a skill says "deal no damage", it should actually deal no damage. I fail to see how this is consistent with dealing damage with Order of Pain, which, if you read its desc, says that the bonus only triggers when the target takes damage. 02:39, 29 March 2006 (CST)


 * The Essence bond complaint isn't ambiguous. The character *did* take damage -- they took *0* damage. 0 damage != no damage. a hit attempt is made, the hit succeeds, damage is calculated, the damage is 0, damage is dealt to the recipient. this triggers the essence bond. This is not anything wrong with the description or the operation of the skill -- it's just an example of people not thinking in the "computer science" way of how the code actually works. --Eudas


 * 0 damage != no damage -- so you say. The game, however, treats it differently. Take Illusionary Weaponry. There 0 damage actually means no damage. In fact, it goes even further -- there 0 damage means no hit. 02:51, 29 March 2006 (CST)


 * OK. I'll happily admit there are inconsistencies.
 * But you are no more definitively right to say that the game treats it one way than the other way. The exact wording of Mist Form doesn't agree with the exact wording of Illusionary Weaponry.  To me, it seems like there simply isn't one way the game works, and most likely it is ad-hoc per each skill (and ANet hasn't gotten their act together on this issue!).  There are few enough skills that explicitly mention "zero damage" to be confusing and unclear what the "right" behavior is.  For instance, the attacks with Mist Form aren't doing non-zero damage, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Order of Pain shouldn't trigger (like Essence Bond).  IW seems like it replaces the attack with direct damage (so it doesn't trigger things that care about "attacks", but it should trigger damage effects like Reversal of Fortune, going strictly by the wording).  Which one is "different"?  The answer is that they are different from one another, and there really isn't one which is "right".  At least, nothing is clearly right.
 * I'd really like to see 1v1 arenas put in so I can test things easier. I suppose I can try fighting low level enemies with Shielding Hands on, to see what "zero damage" really means, but I can't see monster adrenaline or anything like that.
 * Also, apologies for putting things at the top of the page. I didn't realize there was a policy to put things at the bottom.  My mistake.
 * --JoDiamonds 03:18, 29 March 2006 (CST)
 * To reply to myself in a more useful fashion and focus on what we can do about it, here's where the actionable debate seems to be: Should we list every one of these things as an anomaly, or simply clarify how the game works on the skill pages? If we want to list Mist Form as an anomaly, I'd argue we need to list Illusionary Weaponry also, since it's unclear what those skills mean simply by reading the description.  There may be a more general topic here, maybe worth putting on a page of its own -- Order of Pain is only one example of many skills that care about "damage" being done, or "attacks" hitting.  Or maybe it belongs on many pages (a note on attack and damage, etc., though damage is already a hairball of a page.)  --JoDiamonds 03:23, 29 March 2006 (CST)
 * I would posit that perhaps things like Illusionary Weaponry are inducing the attack animation, but are not inducing the do_Hit function. no hit, no damage. no damage, no effects from things like essence bond. thus, effectively, you aren't taking damage from attacks, you're taking damage from a spell, albeit one that is an enchantment and doesn't require continual activation. this is purely conjecture on my part, though. --Eudas


 * I agree with, and heartily support, any attempt to document and codify what the game means by "zero/no damage", "strikes for damage", "deals damage", "takes damage", "bonus damage", etc. There appear to be many inconsistencies. It is, however, a painstaking task without a 1v1 arena, as you note. Order of Pain was only an example, but that's the only one I've tested. I am fairly certain that something similar happens for skills with similar prereqs, like Mark of Pain, but I haven't tested them. 04:05, 29 March 2006 (CST)

Judge's Insight
Those enchanted with Judge's Insight deal holy damage with 20% armor penetration. Afaik, there are 2 armor piercing values used in GW's damage calculation &rarr; it deals armor-ignoring damage, and has 20% bonus armor piercing which translates into extra damage. --62.142.255.147 20:40, 29 March 2006 (CST)


 * Your explanation makes zero sense. Can you explain using the terminology of the damage article, please? Armor penetration is not in and of itself "damage". 01:36, 30 March 2006 (CST)


 * Sorry for not making any sense. (I do not know how the damage system is interpreted in guildwiki since I haven't read guildwiki's version of it.) I was referring to gwonline's version. Their damage calculation formulas have AP and bonus AP modifiers. Take a look, it's interesting and GWO's version seems to be almost, if not completely, correct. ^^ --62.142.255.147 02:23, 30 March 2006 (CST)


 * If you're talking about SonOfRah's article, it has many mistakes and we have a more accurate picture of it. In any case, even in SonOfRah's article armor penetration is not damage. So I still have no idea what you're smoking. 03:03, 30 March 2006 (CST)

In fact, I just tested this with a sword warrior with 12 swords, 12 smiting, and 0 strength against the AL 60 dummy. Vanilla Wild Blow does 37 damage, which is:
 * 22 (max damage of sword) * 1.2 (+20% customization bonus) * 1.4 (AE)

The reason AE is 1.4 is, according to the AE equation,
 * 2^((60 (5*AR) + 20 (critical hit bonus) - 60 (AL of dummy))/40) = sqrt(2) &asymp; 1.4

So far so good. Now, with Judge's Insight, Wild Blow does 46 damage. That means that the AE is:
 * 46 / (22 * 1.2) = 1.74

If the EAL of the target is now x, then we must solve for:
 * 2^((80 - x)/40) = 1.74

That is,
 * x &asymp; 48

Notice that 48 = 80% of 60. Thus against JI, the AL 60 dummy has an effective AL of 48, not -12 as your "armor ignoring + 20% bonus" suggestion would indicate. The non-armor-ignoringness of JI has been documented by many different people in a variety of experiments, and you can easily check the numbers yourself. 03:35, 30 March 2006 (CST)


 * Your math (and final conclusion) is correct, but your argument isn't. Ignoring armor is NOT equivalent to 0 AL.  Something that ignores armor sets the damage scaling to 1 (AE in the damage article here, I think).  This would be the same as setting the enemy AL equal to your attack rating (Rah's term, don't care to look up the term here).  The ultimate effect of armor ignoring, of course, is you deal the damage the skill says you'll deal (or, if you could somehow get armor ignoring attacks, you'd always deal damage from your weapon's stated range besides crits).
 * This means your example was poor, since what the other anonymous claimed and the actual result end up being the same if you have 12 sword against 60 AL. His claim is that it ignores armor, so with 12 sword the enemy AL would always act like 60 AL, but on top of that there's 20% penetration, making that 60 AL turn into 48 AL.  As you stated, the way it actually acts is just a damage type change and +20% penetration.
 * Probably the simplest test to disprove JI armor ignoring is just to take 0 weapon attribute, use JI, and see that you still hit for something like 0-2 against 60 AL. If it ignored armor, you'd hit for something in your weapon's range instead.  --68.142.14.68 15:15, 30 March 2006 (CST)


 * I never said ignoring armor is 0 AL. On reread, I wasn't precise in my statement above: I should have said (EDL - 12), not simply -12. What I meant is that if JI did +20% damage and ignored armor, it would et the EAL to (EDL - 20% of EAL). Unfortunately, there isn't any skill that does a critical hit and ignores armor for us to verify this.  16:40, 30 March 2006 (CST)


 * You still originally said "thus against JI, the AL 60 dummy has an effective AL of 48, not -12 as your 'armor ignoring + 20% bonus' suggestion would indicate." I was pointing out that 60 - 12 is 48, making them the same as the real (in game) effective AL.  And you just said "[s]et the EAL to (EDL - 20% of EAL)," which is the same.  In your case with 12 swordsmanship versus the 60 AL dummy means EDL = EAL = 60, so setting EAL to EDL - 20% of 60 still works out to 60 EDL versus 48 EAL.  Your example is a case where DL = AL anyway so is useless in proving or disproving any armor ignoring was going on.  --68.142.14.6 18:34, 30 March 2006 (CST)


 * However, you can spend 5 minutes testing it out for yourself with a different attribute rank in Swordsmanship instead of continuing this pointless thread. Have you done it? I just did. Guess what the result is? 19:09, 30 March 2006 (CST)


 * Or you can spend mere seconds actually reading what I said. Have you done it?  Obviously not.  I'll give you the short version, excerpted from what I first said: "Your math (and final conclusion) is correct, but your argument isn't."  For your example where you have 12 sword and are hitting a 60 AL target, you can't tell the difference between how JI does act and how the original anonymous claimed it to act.  For any case where AL = DL his claim matches the real result.  --68.142.14.6 19:21, 30 March 2006 (CST)


 * All right, I'm washing my hands off this article. What an utterly idiotic debate this has been. Do whateer you please. 19:46, 30 March 2006 (CST)

While Stabber's own example above was indeed insufficient to distinguish the difference between the anon's claim vs the non-armor-ignoring claim currently written all over GuildWiki, it has been reported in the past in many cases outside of GuildWiki that JI really does not ignore armor. Thus the burden of proof should be on those who want to prove it ignores armor. -SolaPan 02:24, 1 April 2006 (CST)


 * Unless I'm missing some subtlety, the above example by Stabber does really show that Judge's Insight is not armour ignoring. If if was armour ignoring, then the EffAL would be (EffDL - 0.2 &times; AL), which in the case of a critical hit is (80 - 12), i.e., 68. However, the above calculation shows that it is 48. (Another possibility is (EffDL - 0.2 EffDL), which would be 80 - 16 = 54, which is still different from 48.) In this case, I think that 68.142 was wrong and Stabber correct. Critical hits are odd that way -- armour ignoring critical hits actually do less damage than non-armour ignoring critical hits. 128.2.196.71 04:35, 1 April 2006 (CST)


 * For a critical hit, the difference between adding 20 to DL, subtracting 20 from AL, adding 20 to the difference between EffDL and EffAL, and multiplying the damage by sqrt(2) all work out the same and I don't believe there's any way to differentiate between them by observing values in game. However, Stabber's example assumes the latter of those four options, not the first as you do.  --68.142.14.47 19:51, 1 April 2006 (CST)


 * First of all, Stabber's example, as far as I can tell, is an attempt to discover---experimentally---the EFfAL for a critical hit under JI using the equation for damage that is the basis of every damage article I've ever seen. Therefore, it is simply wrong to say that she was assuming any particular behaviour with regard to critical hits. Secondly, she was trying to prove that JI doesn't cause armour ignoring damage. In every scenario for armour ignoring damage, the EffAL would not be 48. Third, she was trying to advocate for JI causing just 20% armour penetration. For this claim, there is at least one way to interpret the damage equation so the EffAL works out to be 48. I remain mystified by your and SolaPan's objections to her calculation above. If you do believe that an EffAL of 48 given the setting of Stabber's experiment is consistent with JI causing armour ignoring damage, please explain it as such, without referencing earlier comments. 128.2.196.71 21:39, 1 April 2006 (CST)

Mist Form
Nothing on Mist Form says the attacks don't hit. It appears that the attacks hit for zero damage, which is maybe a special case? I don't know if the way Mist Form works is different from, say, doing zero damage vs. someone with Shielding Hands. Maybe it's not an anomaly at all. --JoDiamonds 02:23, 29 March 2006 (CST)


 * If the attacks hit, they should give all the on hit bonuses, including adrenaline, energy (for zealous), life stealing (for vampiric), etc. But they don't. Also, please stop adding new comments to the top of the page. 02:42, 29 March 2006 (CST)


 * In fact, I tested a Warrior's ability against Mist Form using the Eidolon in Mineral Springs while solo IDS farming for some new guildmates and although my attacks did not do any damage while he was under the effect of Mist Form, my adrenaline did increase on every swing thus easily killing it with Sever Artery and Riposte, both adrenaline skills. --Gares Redstorm 02:42, 1 April 2006 (CST)


 * Mist Form used to not give adrenaline, but this was fixed in one of the updates. I remember this because I used to farm the Tengu in Twin Serpent Lakes (before they added mesmers there) using both a Mist Form ele and an invincimonk. They wouldn't use Riposte with Mist Form. I don't recall if it was a documented or an undocumented change. 128.2.196.71 05:23, 1 April 2006 (CST)