Talk:Reference of perfect mesmer weapons

article naming

General discussion over at: Guild Wars Wiki talk:Formatting/Article names# Non-topic articles... -PanSola 17:45, 13 April 2007 (EDT)

disagree with using "items"

Armor are items too. This article should not encompass armors with perfect stats of Mesmers. -PanSola 01:48, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

Yeah, makes sense. (It was just me still being hesitant to call focus items "weapons") --Rezyk 02:01, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

Dual-inscription and dual-suffix items

Shouldn't both bonuses be in the appropriate column or the inherent column instead of arbitrarily sticking one in the wrong column? -- Gordon Ecker 00:31, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Update or delete?

It seems this list is out of date, and I'm not sure it's really needed. We already have the information neatly divided into crafted and unique weapons in more manageable lists. - anja 12:35, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

But the "perfect" collector weapons aren't listed there as well, are they? Maybe this article could be moved into the user namespace of PanSola instead? In case he still wants it. —ZerphaThe Improver 12:50, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

List of mesmer collector weapons, forgot about collectors :) - anja 15:47, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

2011 suggestion to delete

The recent suggestion to delete based on redundancy doesn't point to the specific page/pages that contain the same info. I've looked at Category:Lists_of_mesmer_weapons; as far as I can tell, you have to visit all/most of those pages to see all the perfect mesmer weapons.

So, instead of deleting, perhaps we should revamp all of these lists so that they are more easily maintained.  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 04:37, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

This is a combined list of unique weapons (minus a few Istan and Shing Jea drops), collector weapons, and the perfect crafted-by-weaponsmith items from Prophecies, Factions, and Nightfall. The crafted items don't have separate profession lists, which is one advantage this page has. There are no EoTN items listed.

I don't think this page is really serving anyone anymore not only because it is out of date, but also because people rarely use collector items (since perfect "Forget Me Not" mods are so expensive, this is the only use I can see for collector items), and I've never heard of someone paying 5k+materials+a mod or two to make a crafted item, other than the EoTN weapons, and only those rarely. Most of the time when someone wants a perfect weapon they'll 1) find, buy, or trade their end-game reward for a green 2) find or buy a max gold weapon and find or buy max mods 3) find or buy mods for their oppressor/destroyer/tormented weapon.

If we do keep the page, we really should update this page, make pages for the rest of the professions, make a "perfect weapons by profession" navbox, and find places to link to these pages. Manifold 14:23, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

We shouldn't decide for others based on how we prefer to play the game. We should provide the data and let folks decide how they want to use it.

I agree that the page must be updated (and pages for the other profs should be created)...if this one remains.

I disagree that people rarely make use of this info. While that might be true for those who have played for a long time, newer players (and those who hate trading) would far prefer to farm trophies, hoard, and/or pay an NPC rather than spend even 5 minutes waiting to trade. In fact, one of my friends still hordes items based on the perfect [prof] lists (available via Guild Wiki); he hates trading, but doesn't mind farming or collecting.

Also: on every unique weapon page, we post instructions for replicating the stats; perfect weapons are an essential component of that.

I'll add this to the list of articles I'm working on (I'd like to find an easier way to collect/present the data than the method we usually use.) In the meantime...I hate to admit it, but it might be more sensible to delete the article; as it currently exists, Manifold is correct that it's misleading and orphaned.  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 16:59, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

"as far as I can tell, you have to visit all/most of those pages to see all the perfect mesmer weapons." Incorrect. Just these three (which I will note can be easily found from Quick access links). If there is any perfect mesmer weapon missing from those three pages, it is a mistake that should be corrected. Similarly for the equivalent pages for the other professions. - Tanetris 17:30, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I never even knew this page existed until now, and I've been on the wiki for about 3 years. Also, at the bottom of each page is a counter telling how many times it's been viewed; this page has about 28,000 views, the list of mesmer unique items has 214,000 views, the list of mesmer collector weapons has 48,000 views, and the weaponsmith pages have 60,000, 87,000 and 107,000 views. That's another indication that this page is unnecessary. -- Hong 17:33, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

That might be because the other pages are linked from the Main Page and/or from quick links. In other words, that's not a measure of interest; it's a measure of how easy the page was to find.  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 17:39, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

One way or another, it shows that people haven't had trouble finding the information that's on this page. -- Hong 17:41, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. I had so much trouble finding this information at GWW that I went to Guild Wiki and created my own tracking tool. The # of times accessed data only shows that people didn't find this page; it says nothing about how valuable it would be (or would not have been) if it was easier to find.  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 17:50, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

What information were you after that wasn't in the pages linked from the main page? -- Hong 17:52, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I definitely agree with TEF that we shouldn't discriminate as to which pages exist based on our tastes, but this page doesn't have unique info, it's just pre-existing info arranged in a different way. When it comes to pages like these, I do think we should judge based on need, else we have an unnavigable, inconsistent mess of pages.

I'm not sure which weaponsmith pages Hong is referring to, but List_of_mesmer_crafted_weapons (which I wasn't aware of until Tanetris pointed it out, but then I am not very familiar with QAL and have only visited it and the main page maybe 15 times put together, which is probably unusual) has 7,000 views (unique items has 30 times the views), despite nice linkage (QAL is a popular page, and all 3 items types are linked to on it).

If someone(s) wants to put the work into making this page and 9 others complete, more power to them, but I think the current pages are serving players adequately. Perhaps some more/better linkage to the unique, collector, and crafted pages could be placed on several other pages Manifold 18:19, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

List of skills by related subject is a good example of "the same information arranged in a different way" that's very useful; all of the data on that page exists elsewhere. Heck, the same is true for every "List of skills by <characteristic>": at the most fundamental level, the information is available on the skill pages, themselves, but the consolidation and culling of skills that don't fit the mold makes each specific list much more usable than the more-general resources (or other, different specific resources) for whatever purpose the list was created for. This list is the same deal, imo; therefore, I support keeping it.

As has been stated numerous times, though, it is in need of an update. — Raine Valen 19:26, 26 Apr 2011 (UTC)

(Reset indent)

Hong asked a good question, which I paraphrase as: what information could this page offer...that isn't available elsewhere? I was looking for one-stop shopping to find out:

• Where can I find 40/40 weapon set components?
• Which perfect weapons offer stats that I cannot duplicate using mods? What are the stats from those weapons?
• How do stats for crafted weapons (e.g. from Kurz/Lux smiths) compare to collector weapons?
• I have a lot of trophies x, y, and z hoarded; can I use them to kit my Mesmer hero?
• I have a spare Amulet of the Mists. How do its Mesmer weapons compare to what I could find from collectors?

These are all questions that can be +/- easily answered by a single page that lists all perfect mesmer weapons. It's far harder to make comparisons when crafted, collected, and unique are listed on three different pages.

Obviously it's not the end of the world if we don't update this page (and the nine corresponding others). On the other hand, it does no harm (assuming someone is willing to do the work to set them up). Although I'm a strong proponent of this page, I don't have a specific objection to deleting it until it's closer to being 90% accurate (atm, it's probably 15% trustworthy). (I would like to see this discussion preserved so that we don't have to repeat it again.) For example, I would be willing to move it into my user space until it's ready for prime time.  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 19:51, 26 April 2011 (UTC)