I'm wanting to actually make a character that's good at PvP and raids and stuff, so I decided to join the Moondancers to see if they're any good at PvP, and because I've been curious about them for a while. My third guild skill thingy is Healing, since I find that it's fun to shrug off afflictions and stuff. I haven't trans'ed any of my skills yet, but I'm purchasing credits with a little bit of my salary at work every few weeks and stuff. (Don't have a Debit card, however. Gotta mail in my $$$, which sucks). Any tips/advise on how to use my skills to my advantage? Or, send me to a thread that has this info down? Thank you all!

Healing sucks for anything beyond maybe standing back and kind of supporting someone else. It'll save you money, and you'll be a bit harder to kill, but you've got no offense.

Switch to hexes if you want to have any hope of ever killing anyone. Or, hell, even astrology would be better.

Btw, Moondancer hexen are incredible when used right, but using them right can be difficult (most of the current Moondancers aren't very good except for Krellan, who isn't particularly incredible - definitely not on the Narsrim/Tuek level. Those two are widely considered the best to use that class).

You also can't be anything but mugwump. You're going to have to reincarnate.

I like being an Elfen, though...

Ohh well. I've got a good idea for a Mugwump, anyhow!

Well you're not gonna kill anyone with half a brain as an elfen. The only way you can do it is by mass stacking hexes, then sticking aeon, then sleeplock and lash them to death. There are a few people you can damage kill too, but without L3 eq that's still going to be hard since it removes their sleeplock...heh.

heh i started off as an elfen too, but back in my time I still had Tuek and Narsrim as MOondancers and everyone was saying go mugwump, it's the best race for it. I'm glad I did though, I fell in love with the speed as I kept hunting.

Laysus is the one with the main combos most people use. I actually just alter them slightly to my style since I cure terribly.

Like all guardian classes, it takes a combination of afflictions and perfection with your skills to be able to stick aeon and land a kill. Guardians have an incredible advantage over mages (due to low magic resistance) and knights (due to massive hinderance). Bards are bloody annoying to fight and sometimes making your comboes work on a bard is just a futile effort.

bards are as frail as druids to my experience. You can actually go for damage kills on them. unless they're Kaervas cause his health is too high. But otherwise there's not really and high level bards besides maybe Estwald.

You have to take hexes if you want to be good at PvP.

But you do not have to be a mugwump. It's a huge bonus, but is in no way necessary. Don' t listen to Shiri, he cures manually!

You can take astrology as well, and attempt to make it a decent skillset by experimenting and fighting with it. Be warned that astrology's power waxes and wanes and can't be reliable 100% of the time.

The problem with astrology is that you can find yourself one day fighting against a strong enemy, and after checking the charts it turns out all you can hit him with are pox and 10% ego reduction.

Yeah.... :\\

Go go ego reduction...ftw......

Because I feel like being helpful instead of trolling for a while, and also because I am bored, I'll describe PvP effectiveness of Astrology and Healing.

Healing: self-cures aren't really useful. I mean, they take balance, do not they? And even if they do not, they tend to eat up your mana/ego. Only removing deep wounds can be quite effective, but frankly - a good fighter doesn't need this skillset to be a great (self-) healer.
Healing's only offensive trick is to get a lot of afflictions, for example by drinking poisons, and bedevil the enemy with them. It works only once against each opponent - they will figure out a way to stop this, be it messing you up that you can't bedevil before you do it (peace hex for example), or simply shielding and enjoying you being miserable.

Astrology: it has two parts. Rays are afflictions, and spheres are buffs/debuffs. Spheres' effects and costs are dependant on planets' positions, but I won't discuss them here because using them on an enemy in PvP is griefing.
Rays deal out afflictions. There are planet rays and sign rays:
Planet rays deal afflictions which are dependant on the enemy's birthsign. If a planet was in the sign , then using that sign's ray will deal an affliction . In game AB files have a list, so I won't have to mention it here. It is often unreliable, because a planet ray deals only one affliction at a say and it rarely is a powerful one to that.
Sign rays can deal several afflictions, but can also deal none. They are dependant on the planets' position at the TIME BEING. If you channel a sign's ray (for example, Bumblebee), it hits with at least one planet ray, from the planets that are at the moment in this sign (think zodiac here). It maybe works on planets which are not aligned with the sign, but also in quarter with it, but I forgot. Sign rays are very powerful at times, when they can hit with several afflictions at once, but are rather weak and unreliable most of the time.

Yeah, go Mugwump, and probably good for you to stick hexes. Level up a good bit, too, about level 70-80 is where most PvPers rest.

Astrology can be pretty hot if they've got a terrible nativity (Think. Cardinal Aapek. You can ALWAYS cast Aeon at them at MUGWUMP SPEED). You already have an active way to Aeon, though, with Waning. I haven't experimented with MD Astrology too much.

I think your guild can get you a combat system if you try and reach a Security position in your guild. So, for the sake of convenience, start learning to do things manually. It'll save you a good bit of cash and possibly save your butt should your system fail on you.

If you care about RP more than fighting, but what to fight as well, then my advice is to go hexes, but stay Elfen. Elfen aren't THAT bad, really, and you can always reincarnate later if you want. Until you're really good, it's hard to capitalize on the speed bonus of being mugwump anyway, and the fragile nature of mugwumps is a bit hard to deal with when you don't have tons of trans skills.

There really isn't much wrong with elfen, and bashing is easier in my opinion. Once you're level 80ish, you can always reincarnate.

Being a Moondancer and one learning to fight with astrology (I refuse to switch to hexes), I can honestly say it isn't terrible, but it could be better. It takes a lot of work and you have to be more creative with your thinking than with hexes to actually get them to a point where they can't cure too much or move as well as use more of your Moon abilities.

I can say that astrology aeon is near useless as a MD but still not too bad because they might not know and then not cure it. I much prefer the anorexia aapek gives. With astrology, consider yourself lucky if you have someone with both sidiak as stupidity and aapek with anorexia. Usually you can find another ray afflict or two to help delay their fighting or curing too when you have those two rays. Spheres, if you know which ones are negative and positive at the time, can be useful too in combat and they can't be cured unless another astrologer is there with the ability to cast the opposite sphere. A tactic I employ when sparring Sojiro is to get him with aeon a couple of times, then cast anorexia, stupidity, and peace on him, then wane him a bit more. I'll also throw in Moon's targetted dark for the passive afflicting and if you're high enough in Wicca, you'll also have crone for passive afflicting. To stop people from running, I took something from Sojiro. I can Moon shafts and then winter. This only works if you have enough lowmagic though. Winter hides the exits and shafts just makes exits randomly appear and disappear so with winter, they never know which exit they can go to run.

Not sure how much that'll help, but it's a brief insight to MD astrology fighting, especially from someone who isn't transcendent in it yet.

Hmm... Well, I'll go Mugwump then, seeing as you guys have convinced me. However, I think I might stay with Healing, until the time when I can get enough credits to Trans. Hexes immediately.

nejii always says ray casting is fast, not sure how fast that means but I use hexes to define fast so about a second or so. if you're also lucky you can doublecast and get 2 aeon effects. healing is pretty terrible all around. Laysus, the champ and envoy tried to go healing and get some changes for it. he switched back pretty quickly to hexes. If you're not a serious 1v1 fighter than astrology is also a fine choice, it's a great supplement in all the group fights because it's so random.

You cannot 'doublecast aeon' using astrology. As a Mugwump, you can aeon at a fast pace (2-3 second eq?) - if it's done through Constellation/Stellium, it can end up being rather useful. Astrology works fine for combat at times (just a few days ago, I was running around quite OP with everything in Skull), and it's a very nice skill for buffs/minor 'utility'. Depends on the situation, but it may also allow for damage kills with negative Spheres + Papaxi health reduction.

I'm a Shadowdancer, but I'd stick with Hexes for a Moonie. Astrology is nice, but Hexes is far better for Wiccans.