User:Malokai92/Guide Index/mod

Introduction
The wiki isn't perfect. We don't have the perfect build for every location for a given player. To do so would be extremely tedious and unproductive. It would also be implausible to review such builds in a rigorous manner and present them in a way that is useful for those visiting the site. Imagine if we listed a specific build for a given profession in a certain dungeon. Someone else then decides to post their own build for the dungeon with a different profession. Then someone posts a different build for the same profession in that dungeon. Now do that for all the dungeons. You can see where this gets redundant. Even if we did this, how would players know which build to use if their profession didn't match or they didn't like the heroes being used? We don't have any standards to compare the build qualitatively; we can't go on a build-by-build basis like with individual builds in PvP. There's no way to communicate the effectiveness of a build to the player if we can't compare it to other builds, so there's no use in storing it on the wiki. In other words, we need to standardize our builds in a way that can be quantified and communicate this to players.

Generalization
So how do we go about this when it comes to hero teams? The effectiveness of a combination of any three heroes will vary depending on the area and how the player uses them. In one area, the team may work great, but in another area the team collapses in seconds. Well the answer came with Sabway. When Sabway was introduced, the attitude was a free-for-all when it came to hero builds. As it turns out, all heroes aren't in fact created equal. This idea that a certain combination of heroes is more effectiveness than a random set of heroes for any given area of the game was groundbreaking. The fact that you can take the three same heroes and they work extremely well no matter where you go was quite astounding. This gave the concept of a generalized hero team, a team of heroes that remains effective for any given profession in any given area. The most effective of these builds can be considered the meta, which is gone over briefly in my overview of the hero meta.

Build Articles
An inherent issue with builds on the wiki is the fact people modify existing builds depending on the area. This is what makes the game fun and enjoyable. To account for this, optional slots and variants are given to meet the needs for any player regardless of the area. With the introduction of seven hero teams, half your team can change depending on what area you're doing; for a generalized team you may even have optional hero slots. This happens quite often considering you can go through most of PvE with 4 or 5 heroes. Don't believe me? Use only the core builds listed on this page and go clear a HM dungeon. It might be slower and more fragile, but you will find it's about as effective as if you had added a full party of heroes. I give my own example to the right.

Now we can't compensate for heavily modified builds run in a specific way, but we do our best to communicate the concept of the build and how to use it to the player while retaining clarity. If we leave an entire hero slot empty, that can imply the hero isn't necessary or useless. If that's the case, why include the hero in the first place? If we list 4-5 different heroes that can be used, we must assume players won't know which hero to use. That makes it hard to rate as well, since the effectiveness of the build can vary significantly depending on which hero is used. That is why we want to retain clarity, to keep the quality of the build article at a high standard.

Case Comparison
The difference between a generalized and specialized build can be muddy sometimes. As an example, let's compare two cases, one being a generalized build and a highly specialized build. I was quite ecstatic about the specialized build since the author provided reasoning for the build setup he chose.

You should immediately notice the specialized build is very similar to the generalized build based on core skills. When we add in the appropriate variants listed in our generalized build and match of similar skills, we get:

Note that since the general build used an SoGM Rit the MM uses prots, if we used our general Minion Bomber hero here on the wiki, the optionals would match up. Same can be done with other builds. Let's go down the list:
 * 1) Build:N/any Minion Bomber Hero - The build already had Animate Bone Minions on the Jagged Bones MM, so the author sought to use Shambling Horrors and Bone Horrors on the AotL MM. Rising Bile and Signet of Sorrow are both optionals that can be listed easily.
 * 2) Build:Rt/any Signet of Spirits Hero - Players often spec into Smiting Prayers if their not healing. Some players will choose different energy management from Spirit Siphon in the form of Boon of Creation and/or Essence Strike if they feel Spirit Siphon is unreliable, they don't want to micro, or they're just retarded.
 * 3) Build:Rt/any Soul Twisting Prot Hero - Almost every play prefers ST over Rit Lord. The author chose Rit Lord because he wanted very high spec spirits and didn't need tot set them up again. This is not advisable even for experienced players unless you really know what you want to do.
 * 4) Build:Mo/any Smiter Hero/Archive:P/any Command Hero and Build:N/any Minion Bomber Hero - You can already tell this is the optional hero slot. Author probably chose this MM first and added AotL later since it has Curses on it and AotL is specced for damage. We can account for this since the two MM builds are interchangeable, isn't that sly?
 * 5) Build:Me/any Illusion Magic Hero - The author chooses PI over Ineptitude or Shared Burden since he brought Earthbind and probably prefers it. I don't know why he wants Frustration over Arcane Conundrum except for killing specific casters because of the short recharge. He bring the set of signets to use Artificer's insignias for extra armor.
 * 6) Build:Me/any Domination Magic Hero - Very little is different about the Panic hero. He uses Wastrel's Worry for more damage, it's not used in general since it rapidly drains the Mesmer's energy. He uses signets for Artificer's insignias like the Illusion Mesmer.
 * 7) Build:N/Rt Soul Reaping Healer Hero - The Curses Hybrid Healer is a significant variant of the build and is always used with Pain of Disenchantment, Icy Veins, or Spiteful Spirit. The author chooses to drop curses onto the Jagged Bones MM and run a dedicated healer with Icy Veins.

The skills left on the general team build are almost identical to the individual hero builds on the wiki. You can see how specific hero teams can be derived from individual hero builds on the wiki, and how these specific hero teams can be summarized into a generalized hero team. While we could leave it as a barebones team build, a bunch of white space doesn't constitute a build article. This is where consensus and discussion come in on what bars are the most general and effective, so that the player understands what works and what doesn't work. Most of the time, these bars will already be defined by existing hero teams. The bars are by no means static and are subject to change if necessary. If any aspects of a specific build aren't covered by the generalized team, we can always modify it to include skills in optionals or as variants that are missing, this is a wiki after all.