Talk: Ignore armor

just want to say I agree with the clean up tag. Being a supporter of the "Damage Type" school of thought myself, it's hard for me to really come up with attacks against that school. On the other hand, it's also hard for me to defend the other schools of thought, but they definitely exist and have a significant number of supporters so I can't just leave them out. I hope more ppl can add to the criticisms and defenses to each of the ideas. -PanSola 22:24, 17 April 2006 (CDT)

Obflame

Why is obflame an exception? — Stabber (talk) 22:52, 17 April 2006 (CDT)

Because I didn't have access to the wiki when typing the original stuff up, and I forgot it's untyped. -PanSola 04:29, 18 April 2006 (CDT)

Language objection -- ignoringness

I also object to "ignoringness". Either sentences that use it should be rephrased, or a different nominalization of "ignore" selected (though I can't think of one that fits). — Stabber (talk) 01:34, 18 April 2006 (CDT)

Ignorification. --68.142.14.76 02:36, 18 April 2006 (CDT)

POV debate

I don't even know how to describe this well, but I keep findind lines like this: Most damage dealing skills do not explicitly indicate whether the damage dealt will ignore armor. . My major problem with this line is that the very writing of the damage dealt will ignore armor strongly implies that the damage itself is controlling whether or not armor is ignored. Given that part of the debate is whether or not it is the damage (or damage type) or the skill that controls ignoring armor, this seems fairly POV to me. In general, though, I can at least agree that there was some very POV information in the article. My apologies for adding more, but it seemed like that the was the tone being taken. Thanks for fixing things up. I'll endevour to simply remove any that that I see remaining. --JoDiamonds 11:32, 18 April 2006 (CDT)

Responding to myself, pre-apologies for picking so many nits. --JoDiamonds 11:35, 18 April 2006 (CDT)

Regardless of what causes the armor to be ignored, I think we can be clear that it is the damage that ignores armor. What else can it be? I don't see that sentence you object to as supporting the "damage type" theory in any way, as it is perfectly consistent with the tenet "damage caused by skills ignore armor" of the theory that I think you personally prefer. — Stabber (talk) 11:41, 18 April 2006 (CDT)

I don't like the treatment of the second scheme. It seems like it was added only so it could be beat up silly. Do people truly follow that school of thought? Can't one of them be recruited to help flesh out the scheme? I myself find this entire debate bizarre because there is exactly one skill, Judge's Insight, that seems to be anomalous while not being simply buggy. All the other skills are well understood. Is spilling 4.1K worth of bytes on this one skill really worth it?.F G 15:00, 18 April 2006 (CDT)

That school of thought is mentioned to me several times when I tried to defend teh "Damage Type" school. I invite anyone who defends it to strenth its arguments and respond to its critisms. The existence of that school of thought is undenyable. Additionally, the 4.1k worth of bytes on the issue of Armor Ignority/Ignorfication/Ignorance is justified by the fact that this issue has never reached a sastifactory settlement in the community. -169.237.5.204 15:12, 18 April 2006 (CDT)

Yeah, I agree with 169.237. That school of thought exists independently of the writers of this article, though I doubt there are any acolytes of that church to be found in our active ranks. It was featured prominently in this gwguru thread, where there was a beta tester (at least I assume it was a beta tester) who seemed to support a blend of the "unique snowflake" and "damge verb" theories. I wonder if bumping that thread now would be considered a breach of etiquette... — Stabber (talk) 15:30, 18 April 2006 (CDT)

I'm an opponent of the "damage types" scheme, so I guess I should speak up here. My personal theory is (with reasons)

• non-skill damage always respects armor. (this is an undisputed fact)
• skills hava a flag indicating whether they respect or ignore armor. (this is how I'd implement it)
• the skill description might give hints about the armor ignorance of a skill, or it might not. (skill descriptions are essentially random strings unless the arenanet staff was trained to follow certain conventions)
• dark is shadow, light is holy. (occam's razor, under the assuption that descriptions are of little significance)

This leads me to the conclusions that:

• there is exactly one way to determine if a given skill ignores armor: test it.
• all the confusion arises because people try to find "shortcuts" to determine armor ignorance while there are none. 134.130.4.46 17:47, 4 May 2006 (CDT)

Do you, then, support a move to explicitly label, for every single skill that deals damage, whether it ignores armor or not? -PanSola 17:59, 4 May 2006 (CDT)

Yes134.130.4.46 15:07, 7 May 2006 (CDT)

Let me say this: We certainly don't need to label things both ways. I think it is a fine assumption to say that skills heed armor (like non-skill damage in general). Any skill that ignores armor should say so. This does mean that I would put a note on nearly every Holy Damage skill saying that. This is because people reading the skill page won't know otherwise. Someone looking up a skill on guildwiki for the first time can't be expected to know that most Holy Damage skills ignore armor (though I think that's a fine thing to say on Holy damage. Stating useful guidelines is fine, but if they break even more useful guidelines, they are themselves exceptions. The broadest guideline is the existence of armor and how it works in general. If a skill ignores that very basic rule of the game, it should say so (realistically, I think it should say so in the game, but GuildWiki should note it if that's not true). --JoDiamonds 12:46, 8 May 2006 (CDT)

The "unique snowflake" theory of categorizing skills by armor effect has only one argument in its favor: it's unquestionably right. Other than that, it is an abdication of both the skill designer's responsibility to follow a pattern, and our responsibility to detect and document said pattern. So far, the "damage type" theory accounts for all skills except three (or two). This is a solid indication that this is the pattern the designers themselves used, and for the three (or wo) exceptions, the implementation of their design is (intentionally or otherwise) flawed. — Stabber ✍ 16:24, 8 May 2006 (CDT)

You are implying my theory was "it was the designer's intention to make some random skills ignore armor and random others respect armor". That's obviously silly. My theory is "The way the game works is...". Also, I think the designers tried to follow both the "damage type" and the "damage actuator" rules when creating skills. And the point I'm trying to make is that combining these two assupmtions yields something different from "armor ignorance is determined by damage type/actuator". In the latter case, Dust Trap and Whirling Defense are either weird freaking inexplicable bugs or the result of a conscious designer's decision to create special-case-code to make them behave the way they do now. In the former case, they are the result of a simple typo (or simply intentionally different, like Judges Insight is). A corollary is that the question "Is 'damage type' or 'damage actuator' better?" misses the point. Both are guidelines the designers use, both have exceptions, both have nothing to do with how the game works from a technical POV. 134.130.4.46 01:47, 9 May 2006 (CDT)

Actually, I didn't imply anything more than what I stated. The article already mentions the fact that design guidelines exist and the guidelines have exceptions. The "unique snowflake" theory equates design with implementation, which I think is wrong. In the physical sciences if one explains a phenomenon as "it just is, OK?", their explanation will be laughed at. Let me put it this way: the statement "each skill ignores armor or not depending on how it was implemented by the game programmers", despite being 100% correct, is totally unhelpful to everyone. Far better to state the rule(s) of thumb for armor effect, together with the exceptions, than to state tautologies. — Stabber ✍ 10:30, 9 May 2006 (CDT)

Physics is a very good example of what i'm trying to say, precisely because of "it just is". We have no knowledge of what e.g. an electron "really is", or why it behaves as it does. It just does. The only thing we really know is "if we did experiment X, we saw outcome Y", which entitles us to believe it'll be Y next time as well. The "it behaves like a wave/particle" rule is just a model we have to make remembering and connecting all those experiments easier. Realizing that and being prepared to abandon a model that is proving insufficient is one of the cornerstones of an education in the natural sciences. And since i'm for taking a scientific approach to understanding/exporing gw, I'm dissatisfied with the presentation of these armor ignorance guidelines. It's like telling a physics freshman "electrons are waves (oh, and there's this exception where they behave like particles)". You might do that to a non-scientific mind, but not to the one you hope will help with yor research soon... (N.B.: I just did it. I explained electrons as "it just is, OK?". Are you laughing at me now? :)

Anyway, I started writing on this page because there were several opinions like "I'm a 'damage types' adherent, can anyone explain the merit of the other schools?". So the question is whether you (all you damage type guys) understand what I'm trying to say in favor of my theory, not whether you buy into the arguments. My impression is we're both trying too hard to convert the other. That's not necessary and not realistic, we just need to 1) understand each other and 2) find a wording for the article we all can live with. 134.130.4.46 12:26, 9 May 2006 (CDT)

Can you not live with the wording in the article as it stands? Because I'm fine with it. (I am laughing at you.) — Stabber ✍ 12:30, 9 May 2006 (CDT)

Good. I can live with the article as it is, even if I'd prefer "it just is" presented as an equal viewpoint to the classifications. The thing I could not live with ;) is if anyone went and removed everything but the "damage types" school, which I gathered was what F G wanted to do, and what caused you and 169.237.5.204 to summon me.134.130.4.46 10:29, 4 June 2006 (CDT)

Conjure X

Conjure X (eg. Lightning) says that it "strikes for" lightning damage, yet the damage is armor ignoring. Is this a disqualifying example for the "actuator" (terrible name, btw) theory? Seventy.twenty.x.x 00:20, 6 June 2006 (CDT)

Conjures aren't armor-ignoring. -adeyke 00:31, 6 June 2006 (CDT)

Hello, really? Then what was that fellow going on about in that gwg thread about Conjures being broken skills? Serves me right for believing forum rubbish, I guess. Seventy.twenty.x.x 00:54, 6 June 2006 (CDT)

Is it really such a surprise that people on forums sometimes say incorrect things? It's trivial to just confirm in-game that it doesn't ignore armor, and that's what I did before I made the above comment. --adeyke 01:13, 6 June 2006 (CDT)