Why should you receive a counter to something for free, when other people had to purchase the benefit in the first place? It took an investment to gain that extra damage, so why should it take 0 investment to protect against it besides a little in game gold? I know plenty of people will trans that new skill too; if it was created (I know I would). It seems people are always looking to gain something for nothing, even when that something will overcome another thing that required the person to actually make an expenditure for.

Anyhow, I mentioned the stripping of frost/fire because we do not fight in a vacuum. There are room wide effects that strip those defenses, you know undoing mote, needlerain, darkmoon? So a lot of times people are stripped of those defenses in group combat (which we do a lot in Lusternia), being hit for greater damage than if they had not been stripped.

I am thinking he doesn't want to have even more skills that are deemed "necessary" to be able to participate in combat. (Which seems to be ungodly high for Lusty already, hearing stories of other games.)

Well it is not necessary, considering the fact that plenty have done well without possession of the skill-set so far.

If it's not necessary then there's no need for a skillset to help with combat balance. If there's a problem with combat balance that needs that skillset to fix, then it'll be necessary to have that skillset so that the problem can be addressed as far as you're concerned.

You have to look at it from both sides of the equation. If the boost was gained by a purchase, than the defense should also be a purchase. Neither one is necessary, but if you want the benefit of reducing the effectiveness of a boost that someone purchased to gain, then you should also be willing to purchase the something. Inclusion of a skill-set gives that person an option, just like inclusion of the runes gives the person the option to gain the boost.

If you want to know the precedence for this line of thought, look at how resistances are handled in other realms. In all of them, but this one, you can train in a mini-skill-set (half the lessons of a full one) to gain added protection against one damage type. There is a mini-skill-set for each damage type available to the playerbase, seven in all.

That's a fairer (albeit different) argument, but at the same time, Magic here costs 300 credits and only resists magic damage and succumb, but nothing else relevant. Adding electricity into that to make up the other half still ends up fair using that metric.

Not a different argument at all. My point has been the same throughout. Anyhow, if you read the original suggestion I made, I said get rid of Magic, and make it a skill-set that covers magic, fire, cold, and electric giving 15% resists to them all. I also feel that then cold and fire resists should be removed from the potions.

Seems like I misunderstood your objection to what Shamarah was saying then. My mistake.

In that case all you're doing is making people pay for what they had before (resistance from fire/frost potions), except that they get the electric resistance if they do trans the skill. All removing the resistances from the potions would do is hurt the little guy who doesn't have as many credits to spend on the game; it certainly wouldn't hurt me or you. There are already enough skills that are necessary to be competitive in Lusternia's PVP, far more than in any other IRE game, nuking these free resistances would mean that you need still MORE skills to compete.

If we're going to add electric resistance, it should be thrown into magic or made into a potion. The resistance granted by fire/frost potions should NOT under any circumstances be removed.

There are plenty of ways to acquire credits besides just purchasing them. So no, I do not feel sorry for the little guy in this regard, when it is possible for anyone to acquire the credits needed in a myriad of different ways. Heck, you have people who boast about being near omni-trans, and not having spent one dime on credits.

Now you're just being ridiculous. Of course you CAN get them without buying them with RL money, and admittedly I have only bought about 300 credits and have quite a few trans skills. That's not the point; the point is that removing commonly available resistances raises the entry bar to combat and discourages newbies, which is NOT a good thing if we want a healthy combat environment.

Ok by doing this, everyone who has trans magic now would get all their lessons back with no loss. (I think, and well hope that is how it would work)

Then they would just trans the new skillset. Now instead of gettting rid of magic, refunding tons of players tons of lessons and making a new skillset, why dont they keep Magic, possibly rename the skillset and add in the changes you are speaking of?

This seems just a shorter, simpler solution than removing the skillset and making a new one. And a lot less work on figuring out how many lessons to refund each and every player who has lessons in it.

It discourages nothing, considering the fact that we are not adding more skill-sets. We are only replacing one with another that makes it cover more resistances. So actually, we are making Magic better. Those who already have it, will already have the new skill-set.

If a newbie wants to get into combat, that newbie will have to seriously consider gaining the skills needed to compete anyway. With the change I am suggesting, it encourages people to actually acquire the new skill since it is one skill covering 4 resistances (instead of the one it use to cover). So actually, the cost to compete has just been reduced, and the ability to compete with the same purchase that others have made in the past has been increased.