Diablo Wiki:Sandbox

Feel free to do whatever you want with this page =) --Leord 16:24, 27 August 2008 (CEST)

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MrFrye's Skill Proposal

As we all know, this is what the rune effects table looks like right now:

<skill class="Wizard">Ray of Frost</skill>

As I see it, there are some issues with this:

1. It takes up too much real estate. Even at 1960x1080, it barely all fits on the screen. At any lower resolution, you have to scroll to see all the data. This may not be an issue for everyone.
2. The rune effects are listed in the order that they're listed in the DB table (by rune icon). This is a problem that is not easily solved when pulling all the rune effects from the table at once.
3. As several people have mentioned, the rune icons are too big. I address this in the first update below.

The Proposal

The heart of the system I'm proposing is having a method for extracting just the "advanced tooltip" field from the skill descriptions in the database (which Rushster assures me is possible). I came up with idea when I realized that once the game starts, skill names and levels are never going to change - just the descriptions. Now for... less talk, more examples!

Here's what a typical Active Skill would look like:

{{{icon}}}

[[{{{name}}}]] Secondary

2

{{{desc}}}

And a Skill Rune:

Sleet Storm

[e] Create a swirling storm of sleet dealing 150% weapon damage per second as Cold to all enemies caught within it.

And a Passive Skill:

{{{icon}}}

[[{{{name}}}]]

10

{{{desc}}}

Notice they all look pretty much the same, except for the "Secondary" in the active skill. One of the features of this system is the ability to add the category for active skills.

Variations

Now, here's where things get interesting. For our first example, let's take the passive skill Pound of Flesh. At the moment, the skill description looks like this:

Name	Level	Description

{{{icon}}}

[[{{{name}}}]]

10

{{{desc}}}

Another possibility would be this:

{{{icon}}}

[[{{{name}}}]]

Level 10

{{{desc}}}

Which might be better for tables with a single entry. The optional "Level" label is another feature.

Our second example involves background color. This one's called "darkmaroon":

{{{icon}}}

[[{{{name}}}]] Secondary

12

{{{desc}}}

Actually, that's the only color listed. But more can be easily added if anyone really wants to.

The third example doesn't show anything new, however eventually the Wizard skills page will need to list the skills by category. No problem:

Name	Level	Description

{{{icon}}}

[[{{{name}}}]] Secondary

2

{{{desc}}}

{{{icon}}}

[[{{{name}}}]] Secondary

5

{{{desc}}}

{{{icon}}}

[[{{{name}}}]] Secondary

12

{{{desc}}}

{{{icon}}}

[[{{{name}}}]] Secondary

21

{{{desc}}}

Our last example is a demonstration of what the rune effects table would look like with this system:

Name	Level	Description

{{{icon}}}

[[{{{name}}}]] Secondary

2

{{{desc}}}

Sleet Storm

[e] Create a swirling storm of sleet dealing 150% weapon damage per second as Cold to all enemies caught within it.

Cold Blood

[e] Reduce casting cost to 3 Arcane Power per second.

Snow Blast

[e] Damage increases slowly over 1.5 seconds to inflict a maximum of 715% weapon damage per second as Cold.

Numb

[e] Increase enemy slow amount to 50% for 8.5 seconds, but damage is reduced to 220% weapon damage per second as Cold.

Black Ice

[e] Enemies who die leave a patch of ice on the ground that causes 385% weapon damage per second as Cold to enemies moving through it.

If that looks familiar, that's because it is indeed pretty much the same as the old version, just with different rune icons.

Bonus Feature

There's one additional benefit. I already have an example on the Arcane Torrent rune effects page, but I'll repeat it here. Instead of having these spread out all over:

Black Ice

[e] Enemies who die leave a patch of ice on the ground that causes 385% weapon damage per second as Cold to enemies moving through it.

We could have this in the rune effect pages:

Black Ice is unlocked at level 53.

• Enemies killed with Ray of Frost leave behind a patch of ice that deals 193% weapon damage as Cold to enemies moving through it over 3 seconds.

The biggest benefit, of course, is that this method doesn't get in the way of plastering images all over the page.

Final Notes

It was very important to me to make sure that all active skills, passive skills, and rune effects call the same template: Template:Skill description. So if anyone wants to make changes to the look or style of these tables, only one page needs to be edited. Also, I tried to make the system as flexible as possible.

Update, part the 1st

In the past day, I've developed a couple of additions. The first is an idea of Risingred's - using smaller icons for the runes:

Name	Level	Description

{{{icon}}}

[[{{{name}}}]] Secondary

12

{{{desc}}}

Disruption

[e] Targets hit by Arcane Torrent become Disrupted for 6 seconds, causing them to take 30% additional damage from any attacks that deal Arcane damage.

Death Blossom

[e] Unleash the torrent beyond your control. You can no longer direct where the projectiles go but their damage is increased to 312% weapon damage per second as Arcane.

Arcane Mines

[e] Instead of firing projectiles, lay Arcane mines that arm after 1 second. These mines explode when an enemy approaches, dealing 182% weapon damage as Arcane. Enemies caught in the explosion have their movement and attack speeds reduced by 30% for 3 seconds.

Power Stone

[e] Every missile hit has a 5% chance to leave behind a Power Stone that grants Arcane Power when picked up.

Cascade

[e] Enemies killed by Arcane Torrent have a 80% chance to fire a new missile at a nearby enemy dealing 135% weapon damage as Arcane.

I like it. In fact, I like it so much that I want the smaller icons to be the default for rune effects.

The second addition came from the realization that I could add a feature that was in the old system: the sub-category. For example:

{{{icon}}}

[[{{{name}}}]] Primary Signature spell

Level 1

{{{desc}}}

Also, I realized that I could use a variation of that for passive skills:

{{{icon}}}

[[{{{name}}}]] See: Signature spell

Level 20

{{{desc}}}

That's cool. Like bow-ties.

Anyway, here endeth the first update.

Update, part the 2nd

This is a small update; an update to the previous update, as it were.

First, people seem to like the smaller rune icons, so I created a template that always displays the rune icons in the smaller size. Arcane Torrent up there uses the new system, while Ray of Frost used the old one. The size of the rune icons is defined as 40 pixels in Template:Rune description, so if anyone thinks they're still too big, you can change the size there.