So I have tried to no avail to become decent at combat.

Is it my overall faelingness that keeps getting me stomped into oblivion?

I need tips or maybe a touch of Jesus.... I need something

What class are you? I'm assuming you're faeling, which answers the race question. What's your tertiary, and specialty if you're a warrior?

That'll mostly apply for your offense. In terms of defence you'll need a decent system, or at least highlights so you can manually cure.

Winning at bard combat is pretty simple.

1. Put up full songs, enemy @tar
2. Weave rainbowpattern @tar
3. Weave hypnoticpattern @tar
4. Weave fascination @tar x2
5. Spam colourburst a few times
6. Give achromatic aura and spam minorsecond
OR
6. Put up octave, give manabarbs/egovice and spam minorsixth
7. ???
8. Profit!

You simplify my l33t combat skills so much.

Nonsense, the above is exactly what I do as Ciban and I nearly always win.

well its at least better then aeon aeon aeon aeon aeon aeon aeon judge?

aeon aeon aeon aeon judge doesn't work.

And how do you expect guardian classes to really stick afflictions without aeon, eh?

Anyway, as per the first reply, what's your guild and tertiary skill? My character is a Faeling Guardian and I do relatively well, although I have trans resilience (which helps A LOT).

i don't think Krin really knows much at all about combat. I generally choose not to reply to him. Even though I start to and have to stop in order to accomplish that.

1) hallowed ground + carcer

2) angel on anorexia (and something else)

3) when they come in, aeon aeon + heretic

4) judgement.

The catch is that if you get unlucky with the heretic stupidity you won't be able to cure out of aeon in time, especially with the angel hitting with anorexia all the time. Now what is -really- stupid is if you get lagged for 5 seconds during this and get the spam of what happened like 0.5 seconds before judgement finishes (your tumble then starts when you are already out of the arena. Joy!)

It's simple but with the 8 sec limit works really well.

What exactly do you need help with?
Offense - this one is most guild-specific. You're a bard if I'm not wrong, people gave you good combos for a bard already.
Curing - you need a system, at least a basic one. Ethelon's free mushclient one is decent, but VERY outdated.
General combat awareness/reflexes (in a real life meaning) - can't help you with that. Spar, spar and spar more, and it will grow by itself.

My largest problem is staying alive and then meshing my songs....

Yeah, no. Someone isn't going to stay aeoned for the 12 seconds with just anorexia+stupidity. Or if they do, they're totally incompetent anyway.

There seems to be a sudden movement in combat theory to assume that we should ignore strategies which rely on the target being incompetent. I would submit that the vast majority of Lusternia is made up of less-than-amazing fighters, so strategies like this can serve people pretty well. As an MD, I usually did well enough with just 3 sleep hexes, maybe a stupidity or two, and aeon. Half of the time my fae would have people drained to 0 mana before I got around to toadcursing. Of course, that didn't work against very competent fighters, but simple strategies like that are still nice against most people.

There's no point in making strategies specifically to kill incompetent people because pretty much anything will kill them.