If you're a follower of the Friday Grab Bags on the Camelot Herald then you may be aware that on occassion the given answer to a question is not clear, or is wrong altogether when compaired to in-game experience. Last weeks grab bag had a Q&A that did just that for many, where the comment on skalds + battlesong items has an affect to the damage of a shout. This Grab Bag confussion* prompted a thread on the Palomides.net Crossroads forums and during the midst of the discussion Sanya dropped by and shared with the readers there the method to her madness for putting together a Grab Bag. You can find Sanya's comment in full here, if you'd like to read the entire thread then follow this link.

Grab Bag procedure: Sanya sees questions in "question" box. Sanya notes which questions were popular that week, and yet, not answered in the most recent grab bag. Sends questions to people such as Copper, the person who designs and codes the spells, and various programmers in a "lead" capacity.

Gets answers back. Attempts to translate the more technical ones into a easy-to-read form. Has a group of players, not devs, look over the rough draft. Posts the bag. Spends Monday forwarding email to the testing team, saying "The designer told me for the grab bag that X is supposed to do Y. These people say it doesn't work that way. Please advise." **** Lots of bugs fixed that way. In the case of the item that started this thread - my answer came straight from the designer and coder in charge. Clearly it is supposed to do something. Testers have said it does something. If you think it doesn't do enough, that's your feedback. Which is welcome :) So there you have it. The grab bag is a picture of how things are supposed to work, your window onto the dev team's brain. I take issue with the silly numbers being thrown around. 90% wrong? Really? You counted? I'm not saying it's NEVER wrong. I'd say it was 90% right. But then again, I just COMPLETELY MADE UP THAT NUMBER, so it's probably wrong!:)

*Edit: It was pointed out to me by Copper that I used the wrong term (error) in describing the +battlesong for skalds Grab Bag question, hence the word "error" has been changed to "confusion" Here is a clarification from Copper on the matter:

To be clear. The grab bag is not in error. 10 people posting in a row claiming Sanya is wrong does not make it so. And I am not trying to split hairs. +Battlesongs does affect direct damage. Exactly like Sanya said. We are in the process of testing +Battlesongs - and comparing the minimal maximum damage increase it has - versus +spec in other lines. (note that I have not seen good reliable, test results of average damage done) As always, we welcome feedback on this.

Thanks for the clarification Copper!