Hey, I've come back after a long hiatus looks like around 120 game years or so.

Looks like a couple of refunds happened as well as a couple new cities have popped into existence.

The refunds are what interest me the most though. I have a good amount of lessons and credits and if I ballparked it correctly I should be able to get maybe two skills from inept to transcendent.

I was contemplating getting trans influence for the CharismaticAura and asked about how awesome it was, this is when I got into a short chat with a guild/city mate about what skills would be useful, they recommened transing my guildskills first: Illusions, Aquamancy and Psionics.
Looking at the skills I do not have in aquamancy:
Flashflood
Liquidform
Maelstrom

Im not really sure if these are useful to me in my current situation, which is basically bashing/influencing to a high circle of experience.
The guild skill: "Illusions" looks like it might be very useful PvP but looks lackluster when its PvM.

Regarding Telepathy, Mindburst looks useful as well as Mass Dominate, but Im not sure its lessons sink to transcendent useful.

I am leaning towards getting whatever the third empowering influence is at least. Then Im hoping the advice from this post will help me in deciding if I am completely wrong and do need to trans my guildskills or If there is a more novel approach If I do not intend on seriouse PKing for a good while.

Aetherbashing. I hear its excellent XP, but I am leaning HEAVILY against a skill that requires 6 other friendly and willing participants to work together in order to be useful. SO I do not plan on putting very much if anything in that department for now.

Here are my skills as they are if this helps anyone:

Common Skills Rank Pool
------------- ------------ ----------
Combat Gifted Melee
Resilience Inept Fitness
Discernment Expert Intellect
Highmagic Virtuoso Arcana
Planar Transcendent Mysticism
Discipline Master Willpower
Environment Expert Communion
Influence Expert Magnetism
Dramatics Inept Performance
Arts Inept Finearts
Beastmastery Inept Magnetism
Aethercraft Inept Mysticism

Guild Skills Rank Pool
------------- ------------ ------------
Elementalism Mythical Mysticism
Aquamancy
Psionics Mythical Intellect
Telepathy
Illusions Inept Intellect

Welcome back! Can always use more Aquamancers.

First, you can be useful in hunting in aetherspace with about 30 lessons invested (I was told to learn until modules). Might as well do it.

Your thoughts on the Aquamancy skills are similar to mine- I never used any of those skills myself when I was an aquamancer, though I've had liquidform used against me in spars a couple times lately. Good for saving your butt if you happen to be in your demesne, I suppose. However, learning Aquamancy does extend the time of your demesne effects, and it might (I'm not sure) have an effect on your staff damage. I personally would give them a lower priority.

Telepathy, I would consider strongly transing that, otherwise you're going to have a difficult time getting kills. Most of my kills as a telepath were with that, and its also pretty decent for sneaking in kills in groups.

Illusions, I would recommend going for claws (the bleeding can really add up), or phantomarmour.

You don't have focus mind in discipline yet, perhaps consider getting that, that can really help with curing, plus, lessons into discipline means a faster focus body time, which can be a life saver.

I notice your combat and resilience are pretty low, which means knights are going to destroy you. Might want to consider working on those if you have a lot of extra credits, though if you have weaponparry, it might not be a very high priority. If you don't have weaponparry, consider getting it, because you should be close to it anyway.

As for whether you should invest in influence, I've never been a fan, but if you're merian (or another high cha, low con race), influence will be a heck of a lot easier than hunting.

Edit: Just re-read, looks like you want to focus primarily on xp gain. The only hunting skills I can think of that you don't have, as far as guild skills go, would be reflections, and maybe blur (not exactly sure what it does...). If you have any interest in combat at all though, I stick by my suggestions.

Thanks for welcoming me back!
Sounds like sound advice. I think I will hang off on transing aquamancy for now and look at what buffs illusions has to offer.
I have been thinking about putting some lessons in resiliency but hadn't considered combat, definitly food for thought.

When do diminishing returns start to appear on skills like resiliency and combat and discernment?

I'm thinking about getting up to the third empowering ability as a lower threshold for Influence, just as a different way of getting xp to not be so bored or have my specific area of bashing wiped out. I understand for a broader stroke I'm going to not the best an any area but I would at least like to be pretty good.

I can see the usefulness of transing telepathy and think after I get a lower barrier on everything else Id trans this one next.

Phantasms only provides one PvE buff - phantomarmour gives something like 5 dmp to psychic. I don't think blur does anything in PvE. Reflections are good, and very low down.

Resilience provides around 25% physical resistance at trans, scaling to lessons invested rather than skillrank.