Again it is asked... tarot or hexes? Both have obvious advantages when used as a guardian with demon and tail of course. I find a good hangedman/shackles combo can be nasty and a -HUGE- advantage in a few ways. You would either have to writhe twice or use Tipheret which takes EQ. Tarot has multiple utility skills and the lovable cards hangedman, lust, and aeon. -BUT- Hexes has doublewhammy which when added with a thrall and tail is unadulterated evil..

Also.. one a seperate note is a symbol good for much? Dominate perhaps? Or powersink, healthleech, and paralysis?

Looking for some handy tips if anyone has em..

Everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE, always says that Tarot is far better than Hexes for Nihilists. Except, maybe for a mugwump nihilist.

Tarot gives you the entangle stacking, aeon, and a hell of a lot of utility. Hexes doesn't.

the symbol is a quick way to stick a masked affliction. Powersink would be really nice if you aeon since there's a 50% chance that quicksilver will heal that instead of aeon.

Paralysis would do great against people without focusmind. Or people who are less capable at fighting.

Dominate is awsome if used properly. Give'em a shovel and order them to dig... empty vials... kind of cheap, but it gets the work done.

as for Tarot/hexes. From personal experience, Tarot is better, however- there is a catch I found -very- annoying. You have to keep check on the amount of cards that you have... and creating all of them is not very cheap. You need palettes... master palettes can cost up to 600 or more, creating them is not cheap either, and then... let us say you got lucky and got palettes created by a golden brush wielder, you get 45 applications. Aeon takes 3 applications per so it's 15 aeons per one. I used aeon heavily, I flinged through a 100 of those quickly enough. Point is, lots of preperations and you can get really stuck if you don't have the said card.

On a different note though, Tarot offers many powerful tools and utilities...

all in all, it's about personal prefferences

I've been a nihilist with both trans hexes and tarot at one time or another. Tarot is the easy route, always reliable with cards like aeon and catacombs. Hexes are great, especially now with the changes to the skillset and all the buffs nihilists have received in the envoys. If you are a mugwump, I actually recommend giving astrology a shot. Kharvik had it for a long time and he always used to tell me how well it worked with the nihilist skillset. Just requires a little skill to use, as Shorlen would know.

Anyone remember when Hexes didn't have Double/Whammy? In Moondancers, even combatants took Healing.

Nah, I had Hexes from the beginning. Hexes was still handsdown better than Healing for offensive use as a Moondancer. It just became better/easier once Whammy and Doublewhammy were introduced.

Also, regarding Hexes/Tarot for a Nihilist... Aeon is to big of a bonus to your offense to lose really. Tarot also has tons of utility, through catacombs/hermit. You also gain a very powerful and viable time base instant-kill, something that you would miss dearly otherwise. Hexes is just afflictions. As a Nihilist with Hexes you might be able to stick on a few afflictions for a few moments by doublewhammying out 6 of them, but they'll be cured up before you can draw out more, and you will lack a way to finish them (Soulless) and Aeon is what REALLY makes afflictions stick (your Demon afflictions).

Personally I say Tarot is the best route, but I don't suggest relying on soulless as your only means to kill. Wrack is a great kill people just need to practice with it.

I would?

Quicksilver doesn't heal anything.

It's a delayed cure, and it does heal aeon. dunno about powersink though, since I don't even know what powersink is....

No it isn't, phlegmatic is what Reyn was thinking of, it happens.

From what I've noticed, If you drink Phlegmatic or eat Reishi, it cures Aeon. If you drink Quicksilver, it has the same delay it has before speeding you up, and once that time passes Aeon is cured and you're speeded up, as well. Either it does that or that by mistake the speeding up messages came just after the natural time for Aeon passing came. My impression was that there's a relation.

I'm 99% sure quicksilver can be put up while aeoned, but it does not cure the aeon. So, if they tried to aeon you again while you were aeoned, the quicksilver would be stripped, but otherwise, once the aeon wore off or you cured it, you'd be fine and with quicksilver up.

I am 100% sure that this post is true. Happened to me more than once - you can have aeon and quicksilver, you can put quicksilver when aeoned and it won't cure it.

EDIT: Because of course, quicksilver doesn't cure aeon.

From what I seem to recall it was something like

- Aeon affecting -
- Quicksilver sip -
time
time
time
- You return to the normal timestream -
- Your reflexes, blah, blah, Quicksilver defense coming up -

So, it may be just the aeon passing.

Just no, you're wrong, please stop. Aeon goes away by itself, that is true, that doesn't mean Quicksilver cures it, nor does Reishi. The only curatives that cure Aeon are Phlegmatic and Allheale.

...

Reishi does cure it...

REISHI: (eat) pacified, aeon, peace, powersink, justice, punctured aura

Reishi's just bad because it's two commands to eat it. One to take out of the rift, one to eat.

Oh right, I've never seen anyone use Reishi for that purpose. The point about Quicksilver still stands.

For a while, I was pondering having reishi out at all times, and then just eating or sipping based on which balance I had at the time, prioritizing sipping. But I didn't feel like bothering.