Talk:Guardian

New Formatting

Elinnea, I'm going to do some formatting changes today to see what you think. If you hate them, they can be undone (hooray the magic of Wikis). If you love them, we should think about putting them in all the other class pages. Part of what I'm trying to do with the formatting I'm putting up for you to see today is have some standardization from one table to the next on the page - so all the column widths will be the same and in the same place. The only tricky part is with skills that have especially long names (such as Protection by the Sword). I think that's one of the longest skill names in the game, but if there's a longer one and we do standardize the class pages with this format, we'll need to adjust ALL of the tables so that the longest-named skill in the game can fit (otherwise we're not standardizing anything). Bastrom (talk) 22:45, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Any comments on the experimental formatting I put up for this page? Bastrom (talk) 09:40, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

I am super impressed by your work. And it's very nice to not be the only person working on this, haha!

• I added a trait tree to the traits page. I don't like that it's so wide, because it messes up the nice uniformity of the tables you've set up, but I haven't figured out a way to make it narrower, and I do like having some kind of visual if possible. (Not everyone likes to think in tables.) I'm also not happy with the way the arrows look, but that's still in flux, while we decide whether or not it should even be there.

I had been contemplating this as well (including a visual like the in-game layout). I decided it'd be a "next project" thing. I think we can make it work... the other tables are 700, so we could comfortably make the trait tree tables 230 wide, which is 50 per column with a spacing of 10 between each (enough room for a > perhaps).

I don't think we need to include the spec set header that you used, though (people may find that confusing since we aren't then also including the rest of the spec set, but since the spec set is automatic once you choose it, I don't know if we really need a visual representation of it... do we?). Bastrom (talk) 17:42, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

• I'm a little dubious about the many layers of transclusions. Why did you make the trait set descriptions a separate page, for example? It means that if someone wants to edit anything about traits they have to work their way down through three or four layers of templates, which can be a barrier, especially for new editors.

I did that so that the subsections can be separately called to other pages. The descriptions (currently placeholders) can be called to the main page along with the spec set and traits but NOT the skills (called separately, in the skills section), but then all four can show up together on the line pages. It also makes it handy if we were to wish to expand further to include, for example, a page which just shows the description, skills, and spec set, but not the traits, for all three at once, as a sort of "discuss the specs" page.

I made sure to make the header names a link to to the subsection, so although there's some added drill-down to reach the editable section, at least that drill-down is easy. Bastrom (talk) 17:42, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

• The new trait set pages caused some drama with the old Guardian traits that haven't been converted to the new Trait template. See Reactive Block, for instance. I suppose they'll have to be updated to the new template, even if they're not still in the game. Or else they should be deleted altogether. The time has come to decide how much of a hoarder we want to be. I'm leaning towards just deleting them, once the format of the new traits is firmly in place.

Yeah, I knew there'd be some cleanup with that. I've been noting locally (notepad) the pages for the Guardian which are now totally obsolete, so that we can purge them later. I don't think there's any value in holding onto the data from prior to Update 12 since there is no way a new player could opt-out of the new traits and skills.

I'm also wondering if we should resize all the skill icons to match the smaller size of the newer icons for the traits. The tables for the traits somehow feel cleaner because the icons are more in-line with the text height, but maybe that's just me. Bastrom (talk) 17:42, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

• The passive skills look very elegant. I don't know why we never did something like that before!

-- Elinnea (talk) 15:17, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

I like your Trait Tree! And have every intention of stealing it for the Hunter/Rune-Keeper/Minstrel pages. (They're the only ones I have characters for.)

• See Traits and Class Trait Point for related work.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 03:24, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Awesome! Feel free to copy any/all of the formatting stuff I've done here, I'd love to see it propagate onto the other class pages. I may do so myself on some of the other classes I play, once I finish up the Guardian page. Bastrom (talk) 04:29, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Re-reading this, I realized that Magill was probably talking to you, Elinnea. Oops! I didn't mean to steal your thunder, there! - Bastrom (talk) 23:32, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

I love your trait trees, very helpful. Are you going to include the class deeds sometime soon? That's one of the main reasons I visit the class wiki pages. astotel32

Helm's Deep

Has anyone begun working on offline edits to the Guardian page for the changes in effect as of the latest expansion?

I will begin working on it myself, if not. Bastrom (talk) 02:57, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I have an update in the works at User:Elinnea/Sandbox-Guardian. I'm fiddling with formatting and then I'll be copying it over. I'd be glad to have you check my work, though, or add anything you find missing. -- Elinnea (talk) 04:57, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

I had been wondering... aside from it being listed in the same way as it is in-game, is there any other purpose for the class pages here having the skills organized by "group" rather than listed sequentially by level obtained? The latter would certainly be more useful to me, I wonder if others agree. If the skills were listed in a level sequence, it would also make it easier to list out the spec-driven skills. Basically, we'd have four lists: The inherents (all level-acquired), and then a list for each spec (starting with the spec-inherents for that tree, followed by the point-acquired for the tree, in order of the minimum points required to learn it).

Also, since the skill name on the table shows a mouse-over summary tooltip, I wonder if it would streamline the page to remove the Description column altogether?

Just tossing out some ideas. I've always thought the class pages looked kinda... disorganized. Bastrom (talk) 05:41, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

I like your ideas. I think the skill groupings used to have more meaning than they do now. Particularly with the guardian - it made sense to have all the Overpower skills grouped together, for example, but the stances are no more. Now the way you earn the skills (by leveling, or by specialization) is much more significant than how they're grouped in the skills panel.

I see what you're saying about taking out the descriptions too. The main thing you'd lose by doing that is the ability to easily compare skills, because you can only hover over one at a time. But it might be worth it to have a cleaner page. I'll give it a try as soon as I have a chunk of time. -- Elinnea (talk) 14:01, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

I've updated the skills for Helm's Deep on this page. Thoughts? -- Elinnea (talk) 01:34, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

That looks great! Are there really no new skills past level 38 now? I thought on my Captain that I got some Improved versions of this or that, post-Helm's Deep, but I could be imagining that. The only two things I'd suggest... For the spec/line-driven skills, since the trait's name is the same as the skill's name, it may not need to be listed twice...

Unless you wanted to do an Active and also a Passive list for each line, in which case all the other traits could be listed as Passives (including those from the Set). Be sure to make note that the inherent passive benefits of each spec have a name even though it's not listed on the spec... For example, for the Champion's blue line spec, the base passive is called Masochism (and you later get an improved version further down the set bonuses).

The second thing is that for the line-driven skills I think the minimum number of ranks in that line (or minimum total ranks, if it's a spec set skill) to acquire the skill should be noted. Bastrom (talk) 02:19, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

I think instead of "Specialization" which forces the column to be wide, it could say "Set (1)", and then the others in the set would be "Set (5)", "Set (10)", and so on. The trait ones could work likewise. "Trait (1)", "Trait (5), etc. Hmm... Bastrom (talk) 02:24, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Considering your points one at a time...

1) Well, there are some things that change after level 38. I know that Sting gains its extra effect of removing corruptions at level 50. But there are no truly new skills, and no more "Improved" skills, as we used to know them - they don't get a new name, or a new icon. More to the point, they're not visible at the class trainer unless you're high enough level to have the base form of the skill but not yet high enough to have the improvement. So that's why I wasn't including them in the table - they're difficult to collect information on, and they're not technically speaking new skills either. I added the note about the corruptions to Sting's skill page, and I suppose the rest will have to be added as we figure them out.

2) Listing the trait along with the skill - I did this for two reasons. For one, it's nice to have a link to the trait handy, so you could jump straight to it if you wanted to. I also like having them there in the mode that displays their icons, because it makes the table a nice uniform color, to reinforce that you're looking at the red line, or the blue line, or the yellow line. I know many people think of it in terms of color, and not by their official names.

3) You're right, I had forgotten about the passive bonuses that come with the specializations. But so far (on this page) I've only added the traits that bestow new skills. I haven't yet done the trait set pages, and I think the passive bonuses would go best there.

4) On Specialization - I wasn't worried too much about making the column wide, because there's nothing really in that table that takes up horizontal space so it might as well be stretched out. I was trying to convey that you get the skills automatically upon selecting the spec, which makes it different from a set bonus. But I suppose it is the same thing, really. I would probably label them as Set (0) to show that you don't need any trait point allocated for it to apply. I originally wasn't including the trait points number because you can see it in the popup, but I like your idea of including it in parentheses. Or perhaps in its own column, depending on how it looks. -- Elinnea (talk) 01:25, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Moved a comment of mine, and the response, to the above topic regarding formatting changes. Bastrom (talk) 04:29, 15 December 2013 (UTC)