Talk:Buff spells

General Discussion

This is a topic that surely many people can contribute to! If you don't see us editing within several hours, feel free to jump right in! If you have specific visions or re-organizations in mind, we'd appreciate you posting them here first. Happy editing! DAID (talk) 09:41, 6 February 2015 (CST)

Evarin's scroll guide might be a big help, I've tried to keep it up to date. VANKRASN39 (talk) 10:05, 6 February 2015 (CST)

We'll definitely think about scrolls in the final version. The basic concept of this page, however, is what spells characters can easily expect to get from others or themselves. Stay tuned! DAID (talk) 12:53, 6 February 2015 (CST)

I was thinking more of the organization of the guide and the easy access to spell info :) VANKRASN39 (talk) 15:51, 7 February 2015 (CST)

Would you consider these spells appropriate for inclusion in this article? Elemental Blade (411), Minor Elemental Edge (902), Bless (304) Mark (talk) 15:23, 7 February 2015 (CST)

That's a tough call! The former two seem slightly more suitable where as the latter one not as much. I think when Sarah and I were shooting ideas around, I had drawn the line at defining a "buff spell" as one cast at a character. Granted, these spells kind of vary in their mileage in that respect. Symbol of Blessing is used on an item, where as Bless can be cast at a character. In any case, we'd surely need to Consecrate (1604) to the list as well. Definitely on the fence about this one from the outset, but more because it's a grey line than because I'm sure which way it should be! Especially for beginning players, Minor Elemental Edge sort of feels like something people should know about, for example! DAID (talk) 04:31, 13 February 2015 (CST)

I definitely agree with DAID that those are sort of a grey area. In a sense, they could be buff spells because they help you accomplish your task more efficiently (or at all, if you're a non-sonic weapon user hunting undead) even if they don't fit how we've defined buff spells in this article so far. It's something where we could either leave them out (as we have), create a new section for those spells or we could add a blurb in the introduction (or somewhere else) about them and not go into much detail.

I can definitely see reasons that they could be included here, but I also worry that there might be some additional details (especially for elemental edging, which has a level requirement and blessing, which can be done in more than one way) which might be a bit beyond the scope of this article. It's definitely something to consider and if a lot of people think they should be included here then it's totally reasonable. SARAH3 (talk) 10:44, 13 February 2015 (CST)

how about a section on "weapon buffs"? VANKRASN39 (talk) 13:14, 13 February 2015 (CST)

This is a nice idea I think. Feel free to add it, or eventually we'll get around to it! DAID (talk) 11:56, 16 February 2015 (CST)

Okay, I added them now in a section. Please edit or modify as you see fit. I decided not to discuss permanent things like Enchant or Ensorcell. DAID (talk) 13:45, 18 February 2015 (CST)

"Buff spells" is common MMORPG terminology but the official play.net documentation calls them "enhancement spells", so I wonder if that should be the formal title with "buff" being a redirect. (http://www.play.net/gs4/info/combat_guide/defense.asp#enhancement) ZHOUY1 (talk) 13:59, 18 February 2015 (CST)

We originally settled on this title since it is short and easy to remember, and also what people use...well almost everywhere. Even GM-Estild used 'buff spells' in the official announcement release of MANA SPELLUP (though, in quotes). I would tend to favor doing it the other way around (redirect Enhancement spell here). Also...I just created every single spell circle template using 'buff spells' after we waited some time for the discussion, so at least today there's no way I'm redoing all that. You may also consider that I used a simple and casual title for Popping boxes and in several years no one was bothered by the colloquial title. Let me know what you think about this line of reasoning (you can omit the fact of extra work to change all the templates, since it doesn't have a place in discussing the best approach). Thanks! DAID (talk) 16:14, 18 February 2015 (CST)

Best Approach to Transclusion

Another question that came up, I believe Scribes made the comment on the officials when Sarah first began a discussion there about this type of page. He suggested it would be useful to have that information also included to other profession-specific pages, etc. I attempted my first transclusion, which certainly worked. However, I'm not sure if that's the route we'd like to go. There are quite a number of ways to go about the transclusion. Since it was a test, the way I did it first was to make a new page for Minor Spiritual buff spells and then transclude it to the section here (and then potentially to the A_beginner's_guide_to_playing_a_sorcerer). Another way would be to keep things here as they already are, and then transclude with a hash to the section. Yet another way would be to stuff these things into each spell circle page, and transclude from that origin. I think we definitely want to stream this information around to a few pages, circle-by-circle, as is appropriate. But, what I don't know yet, is the best place for the origin, etc. Halp halp with some feedback so we can make the most sane structure! DAID (talk) 04:55, 13 February 2015 (CST)

Thanks for working that out! I think that I sort of like this approach you took here. I fiddled around with some of the information I'd put at the top of the MnS section and I think that this way, it works quite well. On this page, it's good to tell people which professions use the spell circle, but on the particular profession pages, it seems a bit superfluous or like something that should be customized. For example, on the sorc page you could have a line like "In addition to sorcerers, clerics, empaths, rangers and paladins also have access to the Minor Spiritual spell circle." so young sorcs know who to ask for these spells if they don't know them and on the ranger page, we can swap the sorc and ranger (etc). I don't think that would work with transcluding the entire section (at least not if we want to keep the information we present on this page here too). SARAH3 (talk) 05:50, 13 February 2015 (CST)

To stream circle by circle, independently, each one should be put in its own template and then the template should be entered into the appropriate spaces. Is this something you want me to set up? Or do you think you have it? It will look similar to this from the Edged Weapons page, except in your case you should put the heading within the template, if that will propagate as well:

==Damage Factors and Attack vs. Defense== {{Weapon table start}} {{weapon table arrow}} {{Weapon table dagger}} {{Weapon table main gauche}} {{Weapon table rapier}} {{Weapon table whip-blade}} {{Weapon table katar}} {{Weapon table short sword}} {{Weapon table scimitar}} {{Weapon table estoc}} {{Weapon table longsword}} {{Weapon table handaxe}} {{Weapon table backsword}} {{Weapon table broadsword}} {{Weapon table falchion}} {{Weapon table katana}} {{Weapon table bastard sword}} {{Weapon table end}} VANKRASN39 (talk) 18:10, 13 February 2015 (CST)

Yes, that's basically how the minor spiritual section is right now (I think we want to leave out the section title so we can customize things a bit to better suit the demands of other pages). I think we want to make sure that this is a good idea before we implement it for all the spell circles. I'll take your suggestion as a vote in favour of this method though. ;) SARAH3 (talk) 11:52, 14 February 2015 (CST)

Okay, I made the first attempt at transcluding some spell circles onto a professional page. I'm not sure I quite like how the formatting looks here, but maybe you guys have either different opinions or suggestions for improvement here. SARAH3 (talk) 11:49, 17 February 2015 (CST)

Aaaaaand...DONE! Thanks for all the input, everyone! Of course, right after I did it, someone has suggested re-naming the page (which I assume would then imply renaming all the Templates). Well, we're making progress, at least. DAID (talk) 16:15, 18 February 2015 (CST)

Spell circle checks

I've been working through the spell circles noting the existing buff spells in each circle and adding suggestions for which ones a player probably wants to have running all the time or situations where the different spells are useful. However, most of my experience in GS is being a ranger (of the ranged sniping variety) so I know which buff spells in the ranger base and minor spiritual are good to stack all the time and I'm less certain about the spells that members of other professions keep up all the time. Therefore, I'd really appreciate any feedback on my suggestions.

If you'd like to make edits to a section on the page itself, please try to keep them short since this is intended to provide a quick summary of the different buff spells in each circle rather than rehashing all the details provided elsewhere. If you would like to make any major style changes in how the information is presented, please discuss it here first (or at least syndicate your changes across all of the sections so they all look uniform). -cheers SARAH3 (talk) 10:17, 16 February 2015 (CST)