User talk:81.138.247.170

Your lack of interest in "talking to Guildwiki morons" aside...
I know you generally have a low opinion of both Guild Wars and GuildWiki, but I would like to address some of your queries about assassin skills anyway. I do it here on your talk page so that you may liberally say whatever you want in response in a secluded area where folks aren't going to gang up on you for it.

Anyway, the question you asked on Talk: A/any Never-ending Assault before reverting it was:


 * I'm probably going to regret this, but why is it considered a good thing that certain arbitrary skills do not need a lead attack while all the others do? It looks plain wrong to me, one could call it a "b*g" but I've recently found how viscious this community can be if you dare accuse (or even incinuate) GW accidentally put B*gs in the game. So leaving that aside, how is this "Off-Hand Attack (but not really, but we're not going to mention it)" considered a good thing?

A skill's prerequisites are spelled out explicitly in its description. This is a precedent that was set back in the first GW with skills like Gash (if Bleeding, add damage and Deep Wound) or Hunter's Shot (adds damage; if the target is knocked down, causes Bleeding). Thus, if you forget about the whole assassin business for a second and just look at how skill descriptions are written, you'll see that "if target is enchanted, add damage; else miss" is consistent as far as skill definitions go. In all cases, prerequisites for the skill taking effect are listed in the same manner: if GFS was a warrior or ranger skill, it would look like any other skill and we wouldn't be arguing about it.

"Lead/Off-hand/Dual Attack" refers to something else entirely: the skill's type, not its prerequisites. Just like Gash is just a "Sword Attack" and not a "While-the-target-is-Bleeding Attack", GFS is an "Off-Hand Attack", not a "Target-must-be-enchanted Attack". Why do we call GFS an "Off-Hand Attack", then? For the same reason we call Gash a sword attack: to determine how it affects the prerequisites of other skills. Does Gash trigger Empathy, for example? Yes, because it's an attack. Do you get a bonus from Signet of Strength while using Gash? Yes, because it's an attack. Does being Dazed make Gash take longer to use? No, since it's not a spell. Makes sense, right?... Now try the same with GFS... How do we know whether GFS triggers Empathy? We can look at the description and see "attack". Can we use Repeating Strike after GFS? Yes, because GFS is an "Off-hand Attack".

Now, there certainly are exceptions to this, mostly of the trivial variety: you need a sword to use Gash, but it doesn't say "You must have a sword to use Gash" in the skill description, for example - but, in general, skills will explicitly state their prerequisites rather than hiding them in the skill type, and the skill type is used more to determine how other skills interact with that particular skill rather than to say something about the skill itself. This pattern has existed since GW1 was in alpha, and assassin skills definitely do fit into it about as well as warrior or elementalist or necromancer skills do.

Is this the best possible terminology for this kind of thing? Well, arguably, no, as it clearly has caused at least some small amount of confusion. But it is internally consistent with how all of the game's skill descriptions are worded. The description for Golden Phoenix Strike, unlike, say, Whirling Defense, does correctly use Anet's skill description language, and the text fully communicates all salient features of the skill. Indeed, my only beef with assassin skills is the confusion damage format on Dual Attacks.

I hope the above is at least mildly informative, even if you disagree with it.

A side note: please sign your talk page messages with ~ ; reading diffs to figure out who said what is annoying. &mdash; 130.58 (talk) ( 03:11, 25 May 2006 (CDT) )