I just want to clear up the misconception that people seem to have considering mages and tankiness. With the addition of Psionics, yes, Mages have the potential to be more tanky due to psiarmour and elementalfeedback. However, both skills come with the severe disadvantages that they lock channels.

For those who don't know what this means, psionics use three mental channels in place of equilibrium (their names are substratus, superstratus, and id). This allows us to potentially use up to 3 abilities simutaneously. Some abilities make these channels become locked. When a channel is locked, it cannot be used, and thus we are unable to use abilities that are linked to that channel, and we are unable to use as many abilities at once.

Because psiarmour and elementalfeedback lock channels, they put a severe crippling effect on our offense, as most psionics abilities are lousy when not combined. And to get the maximum effect from the skills, we have to lock all three channels, which means that we are unable to use any psionic abilities whatsoever.

There is also ForceField in Telekinesis, which converts health damage to ego damage. Yes, this makes us able to tank more damage, but it takes 10 power to put up, and it also locks a channel. More importantly, if a Psionic's ego hits 0, we lose the skillset completely for an hour.

So please don't say that "mages are tankier since psionics were added". Yes, we can be tankier, but it comes with crippling disadvantages and is really only practical for bashing.

Well, they are tankier - that is plain to see - but it comes with disadvantages too .

No power requirement, actually.

Really? I could have sworn you told me it had one. Ah well. The other points still stand.

The fact that there are disadvantes don't take away from the tankiness, though. That is, their offense might suffer, but their tankiness only seems to grow with the skillset; which is fine by me!

I like this balance. Here we can choose if we want to be defensive, or if we want to be offensive.

Psionics sound so interesting, give it to knights!

Or in groups where you just staff, throw on armor.

Join the Aquamancers

There is no misconception. You are saying like "Puella sucks because I cant swing my swords while healing myself".

Psionics allow a mage to take more damage than before, hence the tankiness, perhaps in the expense of other offensive abilities. Rather like Surge, you gain more health at the expense of your mana. The good thing about it is that you can opt to use it or not when facing different opponents, like surging is a good idea against someone like Ixion.

More like if Surge would take one of your swords.

Surge takes a load of your mana though (is it half?). So instead of gaining defense and losing offense, you gain defense to one thing and lose defense to another (as well as having less to do mana stuff ).

Yea. Surge is only ideal for fighting others Knights, otherwise we get smoked in insta kills.

Yeh, surge is a real bastard when you only have 7 int during day.

not only do i get less benefit hp wise from surge (cuts your max mana in half, adds to your maxhp) but I have like, 1.3k mana surged.

1.3k mana isn't even enought o put up lichdom

No, Slyphas is quite right. To become at all tanky, we have to sacrifice our entire skill.

And I'm not saying it sucks, not by any means, and I intend to start using this in bashing and team battles where I just use pure damage. However, it's a cripplingly huge disadvantage in duels.

You still have your other two skillsets though, Aquamancy and Illusions. I don't see how you are giving up much if you go defensive with Psionics.

.....

Yeah, Daevos, let me try and kill you with pure damage + phantom.

Bleh, just make a huge ubermense and bubble him to death. Your an aquamancer, cheap is your middle name!

Demesne effects no longer go through bubble, and even when they did, jellies/tsunami didn't go through it. Furthermore, I can't bubble repeatedly, because bubble costs 8 power. I don't ask you to kill with lich touch, do I?

No, but it is possible to kill with bubble, unlike lichtouch... does it even do damage nowadays? I just remember it doing chills. On -real- slow eq.