Ok, so I'm a trill for RP reasons, and I like being a trill for RP reasons.

But lately I'm really tempted to become a combatant, as well.

So my question is, should I change from trill to merian? consider the follow conditions:

- I am a Celestine, level 71 => my health is 2927.
- I am not trans in anything and most likely will not be in the foreseable future, thusly I do not (and will not) have absolve or soulless - a kill would be either judgement or damange. For a damage kill, Imperial Merian would be better because of the high intelligence. However, merians have slightly less constitution than trills so I will be even squishier (is that possible?) when hunting.
- Adding to the less health, merians have a more weaknesses (fire, electric), while trills have more resistances (cold, electric, psychic (what is this one?)). Will this drastically effect my tankiness?

Also, a question: does intelligence affect symbol damage?

Well, I don't know squat about Celest guilds but you really really want to think long and hard about changing your race. From past IRE games I changed race and I regret doing it so much I think it's one of the reasons why I don't play it anymore .

Well, I will be thinking long and hard about this, that's why I'm trying to weigh up all sides. Also, another question: what's my first priority?

Getting a symbol to hunt better to get credits for skills faster?
Getting the skills first?
Getting a system?
or
Getting herbs, purgatives, other equipment?

And damn me for making this thread while no one is looking!

Celestine, right? I'd say go Taurian or Loboshigaru for survivability, but the damagekill might be hard to pull off.

Honestly? If you can't afford to trans any skills, switch class. Celestines really can't kill with damage and no one with tumble will ever die to judgement 1v1.

Yeah... I can see your points. But the only other class I'd be interested in are Bards. (irony! )

Anyway, I don't want to become the next Amaru, just survive out there and at least participate more in group combat. I want the feel of it. If I became strong enough to beat Shaeden or someone, I'd happy!

So, really... I would only need advice on celestine trills/merians.

From my own experience I will answer these the following way.

1. You will find that hunting faster really helps with number 4. And Number 4 to me, is one of the hardest things about combat. Keeping your supplies high and making sure you have all the equipment to help you and keeping track of it all, is the first step to being able to handle a fight. If you can't do step 4, steps 1 through 3 will not help you at all.

2. Don't worry about getting skills, its the least important

3. Healing is 90% of fights that I have noticed. an offense means nothing if you can't heal. So I would focus on 3 after focusing on 4 and 1.

4. Do this first, if you find its too hard, then do 1. first. After you have equipment, and a system, then you can worry about what skills you have to use. And since you need to be bashing for equipment and gold anyways, you might find yourself getting so good that you can afford credits from your bashing experience, and your skills will come naturally.


Thats my opinion. As for changing your race... Thats why I bought a cameo.. So when ever I really wanted I could always go back to being a tae'dae, since I wanted to be a Tae'dae for pure RP reasons, but also wanted to be able to fight people when I had the chance.

Well, definitely get symbol. You'll want to learn Celestialism anyway as sacraments is pretty useless without it apart from non-combat stuff like rezz and sacrifice.

One race that's relatively unexplored but that I think has potential for Celestines is Lucidian - decent con and decent int. No guarantees on it working though!

For bashing merian celestine seems pretty good, nice speed high int. But for pvp merian celestine isn't as good as others, celestine have inquisition and soulless to kill, so your speed isn't really important if you can tank long enough to rub the soulless up then start the inquisition then you will pretty much have everyone on the defensive the whole match.

I would say go Lucidian.
You will be more tanky then trill with same attack strength.
So when in one on one pvp you will still ahev troubles to kill. You will be much more handy in team fights. You wont go down so easy as Imperian Merian.
And belive me at level 70-80 as imperian merian celestine bashing suck. Well that could change since i was one. We didnt had krokanis, gorgogs, tosha or any blessings at that time, and we didnt had symbol.

So maybe a little buffed imperian merian could be nice, im not sure.
You could get something like that quite easy.
Base int = 18 +2 from knowledge blessing
add +10% health or +10% damage from blessings, i dont think you could upkeep 3 at once

With symbol you will bash better then with cosmic fire, but i haev no idea if you will be killing fast enough not to die too often.

Thats my 2c.

Honestly, I never considered lucidian, but honestly, you're right. 14con + 14int looks very attractive, plus the additional bonus that lucidians are close to trills (sorta) so my RP conscience wouldn't burn so bad. Now the problem is my robes are 62 cutting and 41 blunt, while lucidians have cutting resist and blunt weakness.

So, my bashing would increase with a lucidian + symbol greatly, I can imagine. But I'll probably put off changing race for a bit more to test some things with hunting. Oh, but the 11cha sucks, but you can't have them all.



Hmm, I should've have posted "1" as "Getting a symbol to hunt better to get credits AND equipment faster?" You see, what I mean is I have a few credits now and I'm planning on dropping enchantment to get some extra lessons. Also, I have enough gold to buy some more credits.

Now, the question is whether I should use those credits + gold to train in Celestialism and get my symbol, so I could lateron more easily get the gold and credits back, or I should use the credits to get a system, use the gold to buy equipment, and slowly crawl my way up towards symbol afterwards?

From how you've answered my questions though, I think you're leaning towards the former, right?

What's your tertiary skill? Astrology, tarot, healing?

If you want to fight in PvP, you NEED a system. Even a free basic one like Ethelon's. You also NEED every purgative, herb, etc, in the game. At least 20 herbs of each (less if you want only to practice in the arena), 2 potions (1 for arena). I can't stress this enough - you must be able to cure everything. Okay, you can forget merbloom and other useless stuff (those that don't cure anything).

Trill aren't an especially good race, but Merian aren't much better, if not worse. Celestines don't kill with damage so their int isn't very good, and other Merian stats suck.
If you ask me, Mugwump (eq bonus!) and Aslaran (balance bonus - for tarot) are good choices. If you don't want to be any of them, just stay Trill. Well, and Human is always a good choice.

Sacraments aren't super-good, only Nihilistic whiners make it seem it is. Focus on Celestialism. Get Symbol, the best choice.

And you're able to kill without having all skills on transed. You just need to mess the enemy up very badly. Tarot helps with that, don't know about Astrology (it's tricky, depending on enemy's starsign). Healing is useless offensively unless you're Transed.

Sacraments is a great skill, trueheal to cover yourself if your curing slips up and inquisition with a rubbed soulless pretty much gives the enemy a 2 second chance to escape which is to short to tumble out of something like carcer and inquisiton isn't that hard to pull off compared to other things.

Please don't throw this thread off topic with another comparison Sacraments/Nihilism, because as I've said, I'm not going to be trans anytime soon so I have neither inquisition, nor soulless, nor trueheal.



At the moment it's healing, but I may change it since I doubt any system I could afford relies on, or even takes into consideration the Healing skill. This is a change I'm going to go through lateron though.



I will get both a system and all equipment I need, I was just asking which would be best to do first... it would be detrimental to my training - so to say - to use up all my gold and credits buying stuff and then realise I can't get anymore of either because Cosmicfire is about as useful as Lastrites.



Yeah, I can figure that mugwump would be awesome for an Astrologer and aslaran for a Tarot-user, but I don't want to choose the race completely on combat advatages. I like neither of those... so I will either stay trill or go lucidian/imperial merian... what would be the combat tips for them?



Thanks for all this, I'll keep it in mind.

If your on a budget go astrology, you can get some nift stuff pretty low down in it, healing won't be useful till you get bedevil plus you'll have to buy venoms to make it work, same with tarrot it won't be useful till you get high up things but astrology can give some nice things early on.

Merian is actually ok for healing. With the low con and high cha, the health to ego ratio is quite favorable for healing. Then there's a huge reserve of mana for bedevil and general healing. Plus, merian int/equilibrium recovery helps with damage, which is a pretty essential part of a Celestine healer's offense. Of course, in group combat you'll have to numen if you want any hope of surviving.

EDIT: Ferlas is right though. If you can't trans it, you won't have an offense. However, being able to cure slickness, paralysis, and wounds are all relatively low in the skill.

So, which would be better for a small combatant with non-trans skills (consider master-gifted-ish)?

Healing because, as Ceren said, you can better take care of certain afflictions AND wounds, so with the addition of a good system your defense would significanlty increase and in one-on-one you'd be harder to kill, even for more skilled fighter than you... but your offensive would be jack? (not talking Ixion-esque)

OR

Astrology because, as Ferlas said, you would actually have an offensive and would have something other to actively afflict the opponent with (apart the angel) and squeaze in one of your limited kill methods... but it'd be easy for tougher fighters to rip you apart?

Are there any more pluses/minuses that I missed?