Is it just me or is Cosmic a little to overpowered for a newbie skill? I mean come on..let's look at a few abilities of theirs.

Syntax: ABJURE WATERWALK
Gravity is but another cosmic force that you can master, such that you may walk upon the surface of water.

Soulwash
Syntax: ABJURE SOULWASH
Bathe the soul in pure cosmic energy to wash away magical afflictions, such as recklessness, healthleech, dissonance, pacification, aeon, peace and powersink.

Cloak
Syntax: ABJURE CLOAK
Creating a cosmic cloak will help protect from being summoned against your will.

Syntax: ABJURE TIMESLIP
The cosmos is a series of infinite probabilities and you may use this knowledge to avoid the next hostile action targetted against you.

Utter L33Tness right?

Let's look at nature now

The only good skills in that are IMO Barkskin, Talisman (duh), Rain, Flow and Vines (but that's only usable in forest :@)

So...I think Nature needs a good boost up.

Take Nature + Totems together, and compare to Rituals + Cosmic. It's actually a fair bit closer when you put it like that, especially as a lot of the ritual / cosmic things are enchantable.

Alright then...what are the good abilities in totems that are better than anything in Rituals?

Waterwalk can be enchanted, soulwash doesn't cure anything dangerous, cloak is basicly invoke red, and timeslip is reflection that doesn't work on mobs.

As for totems vs. rituals, you get burrow, leaping, + to strength, fear immunity, scent, regeneration, climb, and sprint vs. +1 to a random stat, ego healing for revolts, puella/puer and acquisitio which can be enchanted.

Timeslip doesn't work on mobs?

No.

Well damn...

Overall they do balance out, but yes, cosmic is a very nice skill. Souwash cures several dangerous afflictions, and can be very nice for getting yourself out of a jam. + to strength is no good for druids/wiccans (who I assume we're considering, since we're talking about totems/nature), and fear immunity doesn't help novices that much. If we're talking about master-level combat, guardians will come out on top of wiccans/druids without a lot of enchants. Of course, nobody really fights much at master level, so it doesn't matter much. The skills balance out in the long run, with wicca/moon easily surpassing nihilism/necromancy (imho).

Don't forget climbing into trees, cling, various regenerations, poison resistances (well, it CAN be useful... sometimes...), movement resistance in certain situations, ability to stop SCENT from working... totems is really useful.

DAMN IT! In the three topics I've ever made I've always been proven wrong I hate being a newbie to the forums ((

Nothing wrong with that.

You know, the simple solution would be to hold off on making topics until you're a bit more confident in your knowledge.

I don't know. I'm still in the "Make unhelpful comments in other threads" phase, myself. As you can see.

Scent is good, climbing is good if you're fighting in the forest. The regenerations are definitely nice. The poison resistance is actually misunderstood - it's not a shrugging chance or anything like that, it's a damage reduction against poison damage. It's useful against geo staves, that's about it so far as I know...

Still, it's useful. I miss scent and climbing quite a bit.

I don't think it's that misunderstood... if it was an increased shugging chance for venoms, I'd have pegged it as much more useful than it is. It used to be rather unknown, but it's become much more defined (and most who are at all curious about it know that it's resistance to poison damage, hooray for asking questions!)

Don't forget the handful of NPCs who use poison attacks (Mitrans, Urns, for example). Snake and crow cloak together are pretty useful against that.

and night users have Garb+snake

Totems also have rock, which stacks with red I believe.

Our last tests showed rock and red to barely do anything. Almost all of wiccan and druid summon resistance seems to come from nature rooting. (We tested this by having Alger barge me as a Wiccan and a paladin with the red equivalent 50 times each both in and out of mountain territory.)

Immunity to fear effects is a nice ability that Wolf gives you. It's one of the many things that screws me over from time to time, simply because I chose to bond with a wolf, lay traps, and stalk people in any terrain.

Rock and red did summoning resist, I thought.

They don't do summoning resist so much as "summoning resist."

Wait...while we're on skills (this is so off topic) what's better for a Faeling Shadowdancer? Healing or Hexes?