Guild Wars 2 Wiki talk:Skill formatting

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A proposal[edit]

This is my proposal for a skill formatting article. The idea behind this proposal is to have consistency between all skills documented in the wiki. I considered adding this information to the skill infobox template, but IMO that would make the template too confusing for a new user, due to all the parameter descriptions already found there. In this proposal, I have mentioned both some of the current practices as well as a few changes I'm suggesting. The changes are as following:

  • Skill names: instead of having some skills named Smoke Bomb (engineer skill) (in other words, "skill name ('profession')") and Protective Spirit (skill) (in other words, "skill name (skill)"]], I suggest using the same format for all skills that needs disambiguation: keeping the original skill name if possible, and if not possible using the format "skill name ('profession' skill)", such as Smoke Bomb (engineer skill) and Protective Spirit (guardian skill). This creates more consistency between skill names.
  • Skill descriptions: the kind of description mentioned in the proposal is how most skill articles here already are. There are only a few chain skills (such as the guardian chains) which description actually begins with "Chain".
  • Skill recharge: adding a value of zero recharge to all skills adds consistency when seeing the skill lists, as well as helping to differentiate between a skill with zero recharge and a skill with unknown recharge.
  • Skill activation: this is probably the section that needs an explanation the most. Skills in GW2 often have some kind of activation time. Not in the GW1 meaning of the expression (how long it takes between clicking on the skill icon and the skill actually beginning to have effect), but rather the time in which the character is using the skill. For example, Zealot's Fire makes the character breath fire, and as long as he's doing so the activation bar appears in the screen; that period, in which the activation bar appears, is the activation time. The skill Arcane Blast has zero activation time; it can be used instantly, without interrupting other actions. IMO, this is something worth documenting formally in the skill articles.

Thoughts? Erasculio 14:33, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Skill names: the disambiguation has to be tailored to the situation. Mind Stab (greatsword) and Mind Stab (sword) are both mesmer skills, so a simple profession-based disambig won't work there - you have to use the weapon type. I agree with putting "skill" in there, however, i.e. 'Mind Stab (greatsword skill)'/'Mind Stab (sword skill)', but that's a standard that should be discussed and applied at the wiki level, not just for skills.
Descriptions: Why remove the capitalization? I guarantee that will lead to well-intentioned users "correcting" them repeatedly. Leave them capitalized as the game does.
Recharge: That can be solved by assigning a default value in the template, it doesn't need to be explicitly stated on the skill page itself. (If this is because of DPL on the skill list pages, then the default should also be assigned in {{skill recharge}}.) Personally, I'd rather that only skills with an explicit recharge in-game be shown with a recharge on the wiki. Readers should be smart enough to know that if no recharge is given, then the skill has no recharge time.
Activation: That's not an activation time, that's an active time. It's not the same part of the skill mechanics. During the activation time, nothing happens; during the active time, stuff happens. It's distinct from a duration time because you can do other things during the duration of a skill you just activated, but you can't do anything else during a skill's active time (or if you do, it cuts off the active time early, I think). —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 14:57, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
About the recharge, the current skill descriptions are already without the capitalization, and so far we haven't had users trying to "correct" them. Intuitively it's odd to see something like "Damages and Stuns target foe".
About the activation, during Zealot's Fire you can move around, for example. It doesn't require you to do nothing. Erasculio 15:16, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
Sorry, my wording was apparently too vague there. By "do other things"/"do anything else" I meant activate other skills. I wasn't even thinking about movement since there is very little that restricts movement in GW2. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 15:29, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
Prior to any mass renaming project of skills, I would like to wait until release (or closer to) due to the fact that I believe many of the duplicate skills are placeholders. Venom20 User Venom20-icon-0602-sm-black.png 15:43, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
@Ishmael: we could rename it "active time" instead of "activation time", then. It would still be documenting the same thing, as well as allowing players to know how long to they have to stay committed to a skill without using anything else (or accept interrupting the skill before it has finished).
@Venom: there is no need for any "mass renaming project". Few skills would have to be renamed, actually. Some skills with duplicated names are already historical content, but no one has bothered to remove the disambiguition in all of them yet.
Having a formatting guideline such as this would hopefully prevent things like this from happening again. Erasculio 21:09, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
I support doccumenting the skill activation (it's a critical piece of information that's currently missing from the infobox), but I think we should round them to the nearest quarter second. -- Armond WarbladeUser Armond sig image.png 23:45, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Zero-value parameters[edit]

Briefly discussed above was whether we should list parameters like recharge when the value is zero. I don't think we should, because for skills that don't list a recharge, the value is not 0 - it is null. This is a significant distinction when dealing with data, and we should respect it. They don't have a recharge listed, which means they have no recharge, not that the recharge is 0 s.

A parallel can be drawn with attack skills in GW1 that do not list an activation time. This does not mean that the activation time is 0, because it isn't - it is dependent upon your current rate of attack. Listing the activation time for these skills as 0 is an invalid assumption. While it may appear to be somewhat more valid with recharge times in GW2, it's still an assumption that we shouldn't make. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 02:37, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

I disagree, actually. I think it's important to make a distinction between three things:
  • Skills with a recharge of zero. Those skills can actually be spammed with a zero recharge. Unlike the activation time in GW1, which depends of your weapon's attack rate, here the skills are the weapon, and so the zero recharge is, although indirectly, the attack rate.
  • Skills in which recharge doesn't really apply. For example, Necrotic Traversal: it's a sequence skill from Summon Flesh Wurm, and it kills the minion, so it can only be used once. It doesn't really have a recharge, so its recharge isn't zero; that skill truly has a recharge of null.
  • Skills with a recharge in which no one has documented the value yet, so the field is left empty.
Leaving the recharge parameter empty doesn't tell the user which of the three groups above a skill falls in. Adding a zero-value parameter to skills help to identify them in the first group; we should actually add a NA or something like that to identify skills in the second. Erasculio 03:03, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
No, there is no distinction between the first two cases. The first case is simply a special instance of the second case, where the sequence is only 1 skill long. And I don't understand the third case - either it's part of a multi-skill sequence or it isn't, what is there to document besides that? —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 03:21, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
Again using Necrotic Traversal as an example: how long after clicking on it is a player capable of using it again? Answer: the player can't, actually, since it's replaced by Summon Flesh Wurm, which then goes into recharge. Necrotic Traversal could only be used again after the recharge of Summon Flesh Wurm has elapsed, and the player has used said skill, thus making Traversal available. The skill itself doesn't have a recharge; it's simply gone and unavailable until certain circunstances are met. In this case, a recharge time doesn't really apply.
Now, using Necrotic Grasp as an example: how long after clicking on it is a player capable of using it again? Answer: instantly. The skill isn't gone or replaced by anything else or unavailable - it recharges instantly. Which means, it has a recharge time of zero - we can just keep using it over and over and over.
And lastly, using Wind Blast (Become the Raven) as an example: how long after clicking on it is a player capable of using it again? Answer: no idea. The recharge field is empty, not because the skill has no recharge, but rather because we don't know what its recharge is yet.
IMO, leaving the recharge field empty doesn't allow us to know which of the three situations above a given skill falls in. Erasculio 22:54, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
I think we need some outside input on this, because I still don't understand why this distinction requires that we list "recharge = 0" on those skills. Both {{skill infobox}} and {{recharge}} ignore zeroes, so there is no benefit at all to listing it. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 14:57, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
How does necrotic grasp work exactly (I never had the chance to use it)? Is it like the STAND UP! skill in fronis irontoe's lair mission where you can set a macro to hit the skill 1000 times a second and you can activate it that fast... does it activate and the effect applies to the target as fast as you can mash the skill button? If that's the case then recharge and activation is truly zero. If not then it should be null or something like that. --Lania User Lania Elderfire pinkribbon.jpg19:24, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Most skills have aftercast delays. Necrotic Grasp can't be spammed at the level of "STAND UP!" simply because it'd be victory to the fastest spammer.
I think I see Erasculio's point; for documentation purposes it'd be good to differentiate between 0 seconds recharge documented and no recharge documented yet. Also, a recharge of 0 seconds doesn't always mean instant re-activation (as per my line above). Documenting aftercast delays (with a simple annotation, or a character you can hover over (like +)) might be beneficial to help clarify what skills do or don't do. - Infinite - talk 19:33, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
At least with GW1 aftercast delays were always a set number based on the skill. If we know what that number is, a simple annotation would be nice to have. For weapon related activation delays, I think that's way harder to properly document since we don't know what the attack speeds for each weapons are, and some skills seem to increase the speed of a certain attack by an unspecified amount. --Lania User Lania Elderfire pinkribbon.jpg20:35, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Whilst I agree research would be required, it doesn't change the actual display of the recharge value;
  • No recharge, no aftercast delay
    • (The recharge field is left empty.)
  • No recharge, aftercast delay - (The recharge field is left empty, except for an annotation or character to display an aftercat, regardless of how long that aftercast is (hover over the example below))
    • +
  • 0 recharge, no aftercast delay
    • 0 seconds
  • 0 recharge, aftercast delay
    • 0+ seconds
  • Unknown recharge, not documented (aftercast delay not documented either)
    • ??
  • Unknown recharge, not documented, aftercast noticed (via PvP, per example)
    • ?+
Or something along those lines? - Infinite - talk 20:50, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Works for me. Erasculio 13:28, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Same profession, different weapons, different skill[edit]

With Mind Stab (greatsword) and Mind Stab (sword) and other such examples, should they be moved to Skill Name (weapon skill) or Skill Name (profession weapon skill)? I know the former was suggested earlier, but I wonder if the latter may make more sense when someone is trying to intuitively guess what the page would be called on the basis of other skill page names. It may just be making it unnecessarily long, so I would appreciate some input as to what other people think. Misery 14:53, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

(profession weapon skill) Necessary for things like Special:PrefixIndex/Stab. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 15:00, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Pet skills[edit]

There are six different "Bite"s. Bite (petname skill) or Bite (ranger petname skill). I don't entirely understand how pets work but they are classified as ranger skills. Do they need something else for sorting entirely such as Bite (pet petname skill)? Misery 15:29, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

I'd say just (petname skill) for them. I don't really consider them ranger skills, since the ranger isn't the one using them. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 15:33, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

The chain skills tooltip change[edit]

In BWE3 (and onwards), one could put their cursor on top of any chain skill and (if the cursor remains there long enough) the full chain would be displayed. If this still exists on release, we should remove the weapon criteria from capturing weapon skills. This tooltip will then display the base values. - Infinite - talk 08:14, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

The "equip a PvP weapon" requirement is not to see the chain skills, it is to set the damage correctly to the max weapon power. Tooltips in the Hero window do not include weapon power (and I didn't think they included chains, either, but I could be wrong - I know they don't include utility sequences). —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 13:02, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
I am aware of that, but I was wondering if base power at max level isn't much easier to calculate with. Or maybe we should do both base power at level 80 and base power with a max-power weapon and include both parameters... - Infinite - talk 12:12, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

downed/drowning skills - a dilemma[edit]

I realized tonight (now that I have time to test things about various skills rather than rushing through grabbing screenshots of everything) that downed/drowning skills ARE affected by your equipped weapon. This poses a conundrum for how to document their damage. Should it be with no weapon equipped? I think that's the only valid option for downed skills, because terrestrial weapons are all over the place in terms of weapon strength. For downed skills, all aquatic weapons are identical (905 – 1,000), so we could do those either way. For now, I'm going to go with no weapon for both, however, since the only place I know to easily get drowning skills scaled at level 80 is WvW, and you can't just equip a max-level weapon there (like you can in PvP). —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 02:22, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Proposal: Skill Coefficients[edit]

I understand not having detailed information about damage calculation. It's far more information than the average user needs to know, and it clutters up the page. However, I think it would be good to simply list the Skill Coefficient (see Damage). That's useful information for people who care about the math, and it's very hard to find online. That single number is all that you need to calculate the damage dealt by the skill. It determines how much damage power contributes to that skill, which makes it essential for any kind of damage-related math.

We definitely need to start recording this somewhere, I'm just not sure if it belongs on the skill page (or where on the skill page it belongs). Placing it on the skill page makes more sense to me than having a separate page which lists the skill coefficient for every skill. However, I'm new to this wiki, so I wanted to get some opinions before I just made a change which would affect every single skill page.

Thoughts? Dacromir 20:11, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

User:Capric can probably give an even better explanation than I can, but basically, the displayed damage amount already tells you the same information. All skill damage scales linearly with power and goes to 0 damage at 0 power; the numbers on the wiki reflect 916 power (and wielding an exotic PvP weapon for weapon skills). All you need to do is calculate the power ratio of your final power score to 916, and that will tell you the percentage increase in damage that all your skills will receive.
Example: you have one skill that deals 100 damage at 916 power and another that deals 200 damage. Putting 30 points in your power-linked trait line gives you +300 power, so your power ratio is 1216/916 =~ 1.3275, meaning all your skills will deal 133% as much damage as you did at 916: your first skill will now deal 133 damage and the second will deal 266. That's all there is to it. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 20:44, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, there is no information that is contained in the skill coefficients that is not also included in the standard damages currently listed on the wiki, as User:Dr ishmael, above, illustrates.
Furthermore, as there are a lot of weapon-specific skills, listing only the coefficients helps not at all as a comparative tool — indeed, I would forsee it only raising questions for why one skill has a higher coefficient than other, yet does less damage. The standard damage, on the other hand, works (...assuming it's correct) very well for direct damage comparisons.
Additionally, for all skills which are not based on weapon damage, coefficients can not be separated out from internal weapon damage (or whatever the game uses when skills are not based on weapon damage). This further reduces the utility of coefficients as a comparative tool.
Finally, while the standard damage is a very well-grounded and easily understood number (tooltip damage = how much damage you to do armor 2600 target), the coefficients are just some random number that means nothing until you plug it into a formula. And if you are plugging numbers into a formula, it is just as easy to use the standard damage.
You mentioned that you can understand not giving full details of damage calculations, yet you linked the damage page. Those are, so far as I know, the full calculations. They're actually quite simple (er, excluding how skills scale with level which is still black magic). I ask this entirely earnestly, but do you feel as though the damage page was missing details or could be improved to clarify things any? ~ Capric 21:02, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
All I meant was that I understand not putting the full damage calculation info on each skill page. I only linked the damage page for people who don't know what a skill coefficient is.
I completely did not think of extracting the damage coefficient from the standard damage. That makes perfect sense, and means there's no reason to clutter up the pages with information that's already there. I know I could use the standard damage for my math, but I'm working on some theorycrafting that will tell you how much damage you do at a specific power level, which would require the skill coefficient. Still, for the skill page, the standard damage is perfectly sufficient. Thanks for spotting that, guys.
Dacromir 21:24, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Related Traits[edit]

No clue if this is the right place to ask, but I couldn't find it anywhere: what is the policy on Related Traits? If a trait reduces the cooldown on warhorn skills, should all those warhorn skills mention this skill, or should it only be on the warhorn page? Should the description of related traits also be the in-game description or just some general description of the nature of the trait? --Ki 13:03, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Verbatim-ness[edit]

I don't agree with not having a verbatim copy of the game tooltip. Adding in a few arbitrary rules, and the complicated skill infobox make this almost impossible for most users to edit correctly. What advantage does the case and missing boon and condition description rules have? Contrary the stated goal on this page, the condition and boon pages do not include the tooltip description in them (In fact, I have no idea where those "in game descriptions" come from.) To make it "nice"? We should document the game, not our vision for a perfect tooltip system. We can note incorrect and missing info in the notes. We include verbatim item descriptions, verbatim event objectives, verbatim dungeon objectives, verbatim achievement descriptions, verbatim trait descriptions, verbatim dialogue, why are skill tooltips different? Manifold User Manifold Neptune.jpg 20:23, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Not sure what you're talking about. The condition and boon pages use the tooltip description of the effect.--Relyk ~ talk < 05:30, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
I'm talking about the skill tooltip descriptions, not the effect's tooltip (although I see where those come from on the condition/boon pages now). Why do skill pages not use the description provided by the skills? Spectral Wall doesn't read "Fear: 1 s", it reads "Fear(1s): flee". Why change it? Why aren't skill descriptions verbatim like everything else we document from the game? Manifold User Manifold Neptune.jpg 06:28, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
Discussion about it looks like it took place on Template talk:Skill fact . I don't have a problem with the description is formatted since it looks cleaner for the most part. It's something that can visited again, although I'm still waiting on User:Relyk/skill effect :P--Relyk ~ talk < 06:43, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

max-strength weapon[edit]

I assume we use level 80 exotics? Or can we use ascended gear? Also, pvp uses level 78 exotics for it's calculations. Tyndel (talk) 20:26, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

This page hasn't been updated in a long time - originally it was level 80 exotic, yes, because that's what the PvP weaponsmith sold. I don't know what people are using these days, but based on the revert wars on a couple pages, it seems like there's a bit of confusion.
Feel free to adopt this project and update the procedures. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 21:02, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
Oof, I can try... Ascended gear is the new max strength, so I guess we should use that. We need to basically change every skill that damages anyways, since the new attribute baseline seems to be 926 now. I also want to throw out the the lower case modification rule if that's alright. Unless there is a good reason to keep it. Tyndel (talk) 21:24, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
Two years ago, there was a strong movement on the wiki to "correct" Anet's inconsistencies, especially in skill descriptions. Since then, the consensus has shifted towards keeping things verbatim, so I'd say this is an acceptable change. (And I personally support it.)
The problem with using ascended weapons as the baseline is that not everyone has easy access to ascended versions of all weapons. Unless I'm just behind the times on this, I would recommend keeping our baseline at exotic. You should probably also note that - since they removed the stat-less PvP weapons - the weapons' attributes must not contain Power, Condition Damage, or Condition Duration. Those plus Boon Duration (which you can't get on weapons) are the only 4 attributes that actually affect skill/trait facts, I just wrote the procedure to cover all attributes as a foolproofing measure. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 22:34, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
All right, I'll leave it at exotic then. Tyndel (talk) 22:44, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Tons of outdated skills[edit]

Now that the base power is always 1000, there's tons of skills not showing the value of the current base. I think it'll be pointless keeping the old one. Could there be a way to recalculate them automatically instead having to go one by one? MithUser MithranArkanere Star.pngTalk 23:29, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Just noticed the same thing and found this page on skill formatting. I was comparing the skill damage quoted on the Wiki with the tooltip damage in the game (for direct damage). Shouldn't the Wiki show what is shown in-game? That is: always quote for power 1000, exotic weapon, PvE, no modifiers, and versus armor 2600. I checked a couple of skills in the game.

  • To recompute: multiply all numbers for direct damage by 1000/926 = 1.07991 = 1.080.
  • Example: Elementalist, PvE, power 1000, no modifiers, exotic Staff. Lava Font: Tooltip 1292, Wiki 1196, relative factor 1292/1196 = 1.0803
  • Example: Elementalist, PvP, power 1000, no modifiers, PvP Staff. Lava Font: Tooltip 1252, relative factor to PvE 1292/1252 = 1.03195. Mention this somewhere, but I don't know whether this factor is systematic across all skills.
  • Example: Ascended weapons. They seem to have precisely 5% more weapon strength. Checked this for Focus, Warhorn, Scepter, Dagger, Staff, where the number is 5.0%. May want to mention this as well in a visible place.

What do the experts suggest? Should we update? Personally, I would say yes. Else the Wiki numbers are confusing. It would be good to have volunteers taking care of different professions, and to keep track of which have been updated. I could update Elementalist. Other thoughts:

  • Do we have to recompute the skill-factors? (They probably haven't changed, but who knows.)
  • How up-to-date are the entries for condition damage?

End of comments, I really like the Wiki, so these things seem important to me.

--Abraxax (talk) 11:25, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

The guidelines on the page already do exactly what you've suggested, although they're a bit out of date. I've updated them with current information.
As for PvP, it uses level 78 exotic stats for all equipment, rather than level 80. I don't know why.
All ascended stats (attributes, weapon strength, armor defense) are 5% stronger than exotic. I thought we had that mentioned somewhere, but I couldn't find it, so I added it at the top of ascended equipment.
Condition damage formulas are up-to-date. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 14:52, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
Great! Yes, I would agree that the guidelines already implied what was suggested: use default PvE stats, which currently means power 1000. Perhaps it would help to put that number explicitly so that people notice. I inserted a bullet on that, please have a look.
Interesting, I didn't know about the level 78 in PvP.
So I guess now we only need some people updating the skill facts where necessary. I'll look at Elementalist when I have time. --Abraxax (talk) 15:26, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
About default power 1000: There are a handful of cases where equipping a skill already adds a power bonus (for example Ele conjures). I still think we should ask for power 1000 as a rule explicitly. But if a skill adds power, we should stick with the default, which is larger than 1000. Or we could ask to scale that down to 1000 power. --Abraxax (talk) 15:42, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
Power isn't the only attribute that affects skill facts - Healing Power and Condition/Boon Duration also have to be kept baseline (Condition Damage doesn't matter because our template calculate it). Calling out Power specifically could lead people to think that none of the other attributes matter, and then we'd get people reporting healing facts with non-zero Healing Power. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 16:02, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
Updated most of the Elementalist skills to power 1000 (no underwater skills yet). Updated/added some of the skill coefficients.
As said somewhere else, it would be nice if we did not have to maintain two numbers: coefficient and default tooltip number. In principle the template could compute this. The skill coefficients are remarkably consistent, and most of them did not change (except three or four in the last patch, Frost Bow for example). On the other hand, I noticed quite a number of numerical rounding issues, and it is good to have both numbers as a consistency check. --Abraxax (talk) 08:08, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
It wouldn't be hard at all to build you a converter to calculate the coefficient on the fly (unless you already have one going in Excel). I'm assuming you're gathering information in the form (SkillStrength@1000, PowerLevel_2, SkillStrength_2)? Or for simplicity (x,y,z).
We could then output {{skill fact|damage|x|coefficient=(z-x)/(y-1000)}}, with appropriate rounding to the coefficient. G R E E N E R 16:40, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
A bit of a late comment, but I've done some research into how the tooltip damage is calculated.
  • Tooltip Damage = Power * Weapon Strength * Coefficient / 2597, rounded to the nearest number.
  • 2597 may seem arbitrary, but it's been a datamined value for various enemies, and it's safe enough to assume that it's the same number used in the tooltip calculation.
  • Skills such as Hundred Blades that hit multiple times require you to use the coefficient for the individual hits, round to nearest, and then multiply by total number of hits. So rather than 4.2 in the calculation, you use 0.525, round to the nearest, and then multiply by 8.
  • Utilities and traits often use "unequipped" strength. My own research shows this to be 690.5, with a range of 656-725.
  • Profession skills (function key skills) generally use the weapon strength of the currently equipped weapon. This means an Engineer will do more damage with Grenade barrage while using a Rifle when compared to a Pistol.
  • Some AI skills (Engi turrets/gyros, probably others) will display a static number regardless of play stats. This number is still assuming 2597 armor in the calculation, but the Weapon Strength and Power of the turret can not be obtained without datamining.
  • When a skill is pinged into chat, it usually displays damage with unequipped strength. There was a bug introduced with HoT that makes this not always the case, however. You have to be careful when calculating coefficients if you're comparing against skills from another weapon type/profession.
  • A good rule of thumb when calculating coefficients is that ANet likes to be clean with numbers. There are a handful of garbage coefficients, but most of them end with 0, 5, or 33/66/99. The longest coefficient I've personally seen only goes 4 places beyond the decimal.
Maybe we could add damage calculation via coefficients to the template. Add a weapon strength variable to go along with coefficients, convert current pages for known ones, such as weapon skills (weapon), engi kits (922.5), traits/utils (690.5), and have it default to either 952.5 or 690.5.Towelcat (talk) 12:08, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Unequipping specializations[edit]

"In the current trait system, you always have 3 specializations equipped, and the minor traits in those specs are automatically selected, thus this may be difficult for some professions." You can unequip two of the three specs with the following method:

  • Slot 2 normal and 1 elite spec
  • Swap the elite spec to one of the normal specs and back to elite
  • Swap the other spec.
  • Try to swap your last remaining spec to one with no significant minor traits. The Honor line is a pretty good example of this. -Towelcat (talk) 17:42, 5 August 2017 (UTC)