Ok. I figure I can't knock it until I tried it..

I've been reading up on some of the stuff in the Combat forum and once I get a little bit of info under my belt, I think I'm going to get to sparrin'.

My character's a Shadowdancer. I haven't mastered any of my skills yet, but I'm pretty close. Also, I've picked healing as my secondary. I'm using Ethelon's lovely system, which has special pipe triggers for Myrtle, Faeleaft and Coltsfoot. So I'm assuming those are some of the more frequently used remedies.

So, anyway, any tips for this would-be fighter?

Big tip: in EVERY spar mark down/write down/log down/whatever every line you see that's either important or you don't immediately understand. What you do with them depends on your style. Unless you're going to go changing Ethelon's system, your best bet is to just be able to recognize those messages and what they mean to your fight.

Get used to the speed and spam of combat, and use anything you can to make sure you know what's going on at any moment in time. Along with that, make sure every command you use is in one of these categories:

1. hotkeyed to a key that's easy to remember.

2. Aliased to a command that's easy to type when you're panicing

3. so unimportant that you can spend a full minute executing it without worrying.

Bothersome to do, yes, but you'll be happy in the long run.

Don't bother unless you have a ton of cash or a ton of free time.

Dont listen to Guido.

Combat is great fun, you have to remebre that not always you will win and sometimes you will lose some exp.

And you need tons of cash/cr to be good fighter, but if you want be on top then yes you do.

But you should be soon enough fighter not to die in few first seconds and learn how to run if somethings go wrong.

I remember my first fights, my blood pressure was damn too high and adrenaline poped in my veins instead of blood, but it wasnt good feeling i couldnt hit a right key, i was panicing (and no typing COMPOSE didnt help heh ). After some fights it was much better and i could hit in right keys and i could see wahts going on.

Already said this, but personally, as someone who does not have a lot of credit, and tears himself apart for every new ability he needs, it's MUCH more satisfting, and, as mentioned in numerous survival guide thread, possible, to amass your own credits yourself, IC means only.

I think the slower you gain new abilities, the more time you have to intergrate the new ability in. Personally, when I get a whole bunch of new abilities together, I don't use them to their fullest extent.

General advice, like people said, and will - Spar, spar, spar.
Especially as we're going to get an Arena.
BRING ON THE ARENA!

Another short addition: Make sure to take note, and this connects to sparring a lot, and is mostly important for people who use existing systems, that you can't become a good fighter with just a list of affliction lines. Something you have to build up, and I have yet to do, but find the process very enjoyable, is get to know, as intimately as possible, what your enemy is likely to do, as well as studying the affliction and abilities in a depth much greater than their lines and description only (Along the lines, for example of - Do they need EQ, Balance, do they take EQ, Balance, what hinders them, what is my enemy going to do to defend himself, and does this make him vulnerable to something else? And so on, and so forth...)

near all of my kills come from the Night skillset alone, the pure damage of nightkiss.

Combat doesn't need cash, Torak was 100% free and worked rather well. Try new things, don't be afraid to invent new tactics and log everything, re-read them quite a few times until you can pick out where you went wrong and what you can do to fix these things. Also, post your logs and read other shadowdancers logs and logs vs them to see what does, and doesn't work. Its important to read how they handle your defense/offense but you should also pay careful attention to how they handle their healing and abuse the hell out of it.

Sounds good. I'm not really striving to be one of the best fighters, especially since when I do buy credits, more than likely they will be funneled into my trade skill. Combat might just be something fun to get into every so often.

Thanks for the tips.