Kiradawea:

Except most of what you said is already available to other guardians as well. And Astrology spheres is available to everyone. And while Researchers may have Alacrity or Mendingstone, the other Guardian guilds have access to things like Numen or Reimagination.

...

Passive shielding for Illuminati, pls. Healing, too.

With that said, I'm not totally discounting Illuminati's perks! +4 to a stat (Reimagination), increased critical his for better bashing (GoodLuck), increased damage resistance (ChaoteSign), regeneration to health/mana/ego (Stable Aura), +a slew of other defenses, depending on Flesh transformation (blindness resistance, stomach ailment resistance, sound damage resistance, blunt or cutting or elemental or magic damage resistance).

It's also good to note that alcoholic beverages give someone a bit of resistance to damage, too, and Gaudiguch is the place for alcoholic beverages.

Shamarah:

If you're doing this then you're not playing Nihilist optimally. You should be killing with Sacrifice!

Buh? Sacrifice is really difficult!

Not at all, Sacrifice was my most reliable kill method when I was a Nihilist (which was admittedly quite some time ago, but nothing significant has changed since then AFAIK). The only hard part is sticking ectoplasm and you only have to stick it for one balance length. Just set your demon on scabies/epilepsy and time it so it attacks as soon as you set it aggressive (to do this, make it attack you, wait 7.9 seconds after its attack and then set it passive - this will pause the 8-second attack timer, making it attack immediately as soon as you set it on the enemy), then set up a full deathmark on the enemy and symbol dominate them. Then stick ectoplasm on them long enough for you to recover equilibrium (again, this is the hard part - my advice is to try and bait them into using a long-balance attack) and then order demon kill;force writhe;crucify. This will give them a huge burst of balance loss along with scabies and epilepsy (from the demon) and crucify them. Now all you have to do is shrivel, shrivel, sacrifice and pray you get a scabies/epilepsy tick or two along the way (you usually will unless you're horrendously unlucky).

Not that hard! Heck, in most fights I never even used Tarot at all. Sticking ecto is the tricky part, as I said, but it's certainly easier than killing with Wrack which there is really no excuse for dying to. If you want to make it even more guaranteed of a kill without having to worry about scabies/epilepsy, you can use soulless instead of sacrificing, but then you're spending 14 rounds on setup without hindering (6 for deathmark + 1 for dominate + 7 for rub soulless) and you run a serious risk of dying during this time against certain classes.

I agree, Nihilist is a pretty sweet class, if only there was someone to abuse them.

Shamarah:
(to do this, make it attack you, wait 7.9 seconds after its attack and then set it passive - this will pause the 8-second attack timer, making it attack immediately as soon as you set it on the enemy)

This right here is the bit that it never occured to me to do.

I thought ent attacks were all 12 seconds? Or is that just fae fae fae?

Obviously the disadvantage is that you can't use shackles or whatever to help you stick ectoplasm.

Fae are 12, angels and demons are 8.

I should check the forums more often. Hi! Nihilists! What the mechanics people won't tell you - we are arguably the most active guild in Magnagora. We have a very rich RP history and our RP is very religious, given we have close ties with Nil and the Demon Lords and Lady. We encourage public rituals and sermons, have active aids that really enjoy helping/RPing with newbies, we have active leaders that both RP and engage in defense. We don't have a lot of combatants at the moment (though everyone says our skills are awesome) but we still actively encourage and engage in training and the like.

Personally I don't find Nihilist bashing too onerous thanks to demonweb, though when you only have cosmicfire it's pretty slow, but we have a lot of defenses to make up for it! As a Nihilist you have the option of being a cosmic enchanter, which only guardians have access to, and you'd probably do fairly well financially at the moment given there doesn't seem to be very many about. (At least not when I'm looking).

Short version! If you prefer religious type RP/rituals, Nihilists is for you. If you like the sciency/research side of things, Institute is for you.