More Planar increases the damage of your Harmonic skills. Combat is useful for stances too though.

For combat survivability, make sure you get tumble in Environment too!

Okay here I go, I would like to get into combat, but I have very limited lessons ( I do gain a trickle of credits from hunting/questing ) so I would like to know what are the minimum investment to get as a Pyromancer? I have cremation in pyromancy, pyre in telekinesis. I fought a monk in a spar, and think I should learn combat so I can parry with my shield for some limb protection. I was told to also get illusions in discernment and chop in environment for fighting in illusions/druid melds.


Common Skills Rank Pool
------------- ------------ ------------
Combat Inept Melee
Resilience Inept Fitness
Discernment Master Intellect
Highmagic Apprentice Arcana
Planar Adept Mysticism
Discipline Apprentice Willpower
Environment Inept Communion
Influence Master Magnetism
Dramatics Novice Performance
Arts Inept Finearts
Beastmastery Apprentice Magnetism
Aethercraft Inept Mysticism

Trade Skills Rank Pool
------------- ------------ ------------
Bookbinding Inept Finearts

Guild Skills Rank Pool
------------- ------------ ------------
Elementalism Mythical Mysticism
Pyromancy
Psionics Expert Intellect
Telekinesis
Illusions Novice Intellect

-You will need Tumble (Expert) in Environment in order to escape enemy timerkills, amongst other things.
-You should get up to at least Stance Head (Expert) in Combat, pretty much as a minimum that that warriors cannot kill you quite so quickly.
-You are going to need Gedulah (Virtuoso) in High Magic in order to escape locks.
-Honestly, the higher your Discipline the better, since it reduces your Focus and Power refresh times, but you should certainly get at least Focus Mind (Fabled).
-Eventually you are going to want ForceField (Mythical) in TK. It will drastically increase your survivability on both bashing and PvP.

What you can ignore for now:
-Illusions: Eventually you will want to raise this, but you certainly don't need it to enter combat.
-Resilience: Useful to have, but certainly not a priority.

I know you probably don't want to hear any of this, the sheer number of lessons is pretty disheartening. I recommend that you try your hand at some of the bardics and other contests; they pay out decent credits. Good luck!

Thank you for the advice, it is indeed going to take time to get all those lessons in but I do not mind, I am using m&m from Vadi and that was my first priority so I think I am set on curing at least, although I probably should have just went with a basic curing system and asked around. Where would I find the details on bardics?

You'll find them in HELP ARTISANAL. Watch out, it's big.