Skills and thier importance:
Ok, you asked for it Quix, so here it goes. I'll add a quicklink for these and a menu up top when I get around to finishing it. In the meantime the list is in alphabetacal order, and the healing section is probably the most informative for most people.
Appraisal Skills (Assess person, Assess Creature, Appraise Magic Item, Appraise Item, Appraise Armor, Appraise Weapon)
Focus OR Self
2-4 points to train.
Rating: Useless
Specialize: No
The appraisal skills in Asheron's Call help you to identify items, people, and monsters. They are ALL 100% useless at high levels, and while a 10 focus melee might have to use the true value spell or appraisal masteries to ID some of the extremely high end gear, they are definately not worth spending skill credits on. Absolutely under no circumstances should you ever train these skills beyond the free levels they are provided with for certain races. Turbine has stated several times over the past year that they are considering making changes to the game that will require appraisal skills for certain crafting tasks, so keep some free points available on your trade mules in case that ever happens. I don't expect to see these skills made useful any time soon, if ever.
Arcane Lore
Focus/3
4 points to train, 2 to specialize
Rating: Convenience Skill
Specialize? No
Arcane lore helps you to read scrolls and use enchanted items. You don't need to read scrolls, nor use enchanted items at all if you have creature, life, item, and mana conversion, or you can circumvent lore entirely by using rank requirement equipment. Many weapons and armor have low lore requirements and melee/missile defense/weapon skill requirements to justify the lower cost. Most of these can be used with arcane lore untrained and a simple arcane enlightenment spell and/or focus buff. If you start with very low focus (none of my recommended templates do) you MIGHT want to specialize lore if you intend to use some of the highest lore requirement items in the game. You can get along fine without ever training this skill, but there are a few quest dungeons with dispell traps in them that are much easier to deal with using lore rather than trying to jump over them and preying a lot. (Dispell traps dispell all non-item spells but allow spells cast by equipment to continue to run). No character with reasonable starting focus values should ever have a need to specialize lore, though training it can be quite convenient and reduce time spent buffing for combat.
Bow
Coordination/2
8 Points to train, 8 points to specialize.
Rating: Uber as a primary attack. Nice for a backup to melee, but a bit expensive.
Specialize? Huge increase in effectiveness at low levels when specialized. Don't specialize if you intend to reach high levels.
Bow is, as I've said many times in other places on this site, like war magic that hits twice as hard, doesn't fizzle, is faster, and costs half as much to train. Turbine is currently buffing it (no need for this whatsoever in PVM) and there is talk of peerless arrows, and probably some sort of a archer vs shield solution coming for PVP. Once you can cast level VI spells, bow quickly seems to cap out. You're almost as effective with bow at level 22 as you are at 82 with level Vi spells running. Damage increase from coordination is very slow and is far outweighed by the damage mod on the bow and the blood drinker spell. The good news about bow is that you can kill almost everything in the game in 1-2 arrows and an imperil, you almost never miss even at low skill levels, and you can take advantage of the terrain to hit monsters over hills or around obstacles. The ranged attack is faster than war and seems to path better, and you don't have the hassle of being dragged around by sticky melee, but get all the benefits of repeat-attacking while lagged. Even without imperils and vulns, you can two-hit tuskers with bow and tend to crit more often than not after level 50 with the skill just trained.
Cooking
Focus+Coord/3
4 Points to Train, four points to specialize.
Rating: Not just for breakfast any more!
Specialize? Sure, why not?
Cooking is a trade mule skill, and a hell of a lot of fun. There are a pretty impressive number of things you can cook in AC, all of which can be made to restore stamina, health or mana. These foods replace mana and health elixirs that cannot be bought in stores. Cooking is also used in crafting steps for dying and for making composite bows. While I'd never train it on a powergaming main, I'd certainly train it as a role-player or on a trade mule. If you ever wish to make a dedicated cook, expect your character to look like a normal human being....WITH A CATERING TRUCK STUCK ON HIS BACK! The entire collection of foods and cooking utentsils available in AC takes up 2-3 packs of space minimum, and far more if you keep finished foods on him. The weight of the combined cooking utensils is staggering, and you'll want more than one of some of the items as they can break when used. Get lots of cooking pots if they don't sell them in your muling spot, as dying tends to burn them up. It isn't uncommon for someone to come to me asking to dye 5-10 things and give me 20 plants. You go through a lot of cooking pots that way and don't want to have to run around restocking your trade mule with needed equipment all the time. Fear the Sausage King of Dereth, but don't ask what's in the sausages. :)
Creature Enchantment
Focus+Self/4
8 points to train, 8 more to specialize
Rating: Uber skill. Must have for all templates.
Specialize? For PVP only. (subject to change with introduction of level VII spells.)
Creature enchantment alone gives you a boost to any skill at any time that is equivalent to the specialization bonus at high levels. It makes your character much more flexible and takes a lot of the pain out of extreme templates. Training creature adds a full level to magic schools for most characters, boosting your from Vs to VIs instantly. It is superior to arcane lore (as it should be for twice the cost and almost three times the cost to specialize.) Typical bonuses for level VI creature spells are 40 points with the spell economy, and requires no searching for loot. A mage with creature can start casting VIs at level 28, where a character with just lore will just be approaching that at 35 or so if they find the right loot (and don't lose it). This skill is a large part of winning or losing in PVP, as the debuff spells tend to have extremely good economy, reducing enemy defenses by 60+ points with skill/attribute debuff combinations. A full load of level VI creature debuffs can reduce a level 70 character to the stats of a level 35-40, making it a great tool for levelling the ground in PK fights. The magic yield spell alone gives you an effective 40 point boost to ALL of your magic schools vs an opponent, combined with self buffs you can go from being a 240 skill mage vs a 300 magic defense monster to a 300 skill mage vs a 260 magic skill monster. Unfortunately most of this benefit for mages has been wiped out by monsters casting mage ineptitudes and having their magic defense buffed, but you need creature if you want to manipulate stats/skills to the point where you have a chance to take down high level monsters. Even for pure melees that rely on equipment for all their buffs, creature is great as a bandage for when that equipment is all sitting on a corpse somewhere. It provides a large part of the independence of a three-school template, as well as 50+ points of arcane lore available on demand for re-equipping. Creature magic gives you the effects of having specialized any skill at any time whenever you need it, allowing you to make that ridiculous jump, or pick that insanely difficult lock, ID uber loot. or overcome challenges that would otherwise have required you to go out and gain five more levels. With the addition of level VII creature spells, I expect this skill will become even more valuable.
Crossbow
Coordination/2
6 points to train, 6 points to specialize.
Rating:Yuck
Specialize: Of course not
Crossbow is the slightly cheaper version of bow. It has one advantage over bow and that is it does noticably more damage. The disadvantages are huge burden, and painfully slow animation. While you can hunt with it reasonably well solo, it is terrible in camped conditions or in a competant group for the same reason war is. While more effective than war in that it actually can hit things instead of being resisted, most monsters will be dead before you get a shot off when in a competent questing group, or in any camped dungeons like BSD or OHN. Crossbow is a decent backup skill for meleers to use in situations where sticky melee will get them killed, but is really lacking as a primary attack skill when compared to bow. The slow animation speeds will get you killed more often than not and the frustration of feeling like you're stopping and setting up camp every time you need to fire a shot compared to the switft fluid movement of bow. Archers are dead sexy. Crossbowers are slow and awkward. The greater damage on xbow does work well for PK when combined with vulns/imperil, and a BD VI'd quarrel you can really slam home a killing blow, but you don't even need to train xbow to do that. I'd only recommend training xbow as maybe the last thing trained on a meleer at high levels where waiting for the next two skill points just isn't worthwhile to you.
Healing:
Coord+Focus/3
6 points to train, 4 more to specialize.
Rating: Uber skill. Must have.for all templates.
Specialize? Not neccessary for most templates.
One of the best values you can get for six points in Asheron's Call. Every character should have healing, even mages. This skill allows you to max out your health in a heartbeat regardless of mana available or debuffs as long as you have at least 10 stamina remaining. At 300+ healing skill standard heals with excelent kits range from 100-150 points per heal. On the Q&A board a dev posted that stamina directly effects the amount of damage you can heal. My experience is that this is only true from 1-10 remaining stamina. With 10 or more stamina you get full value heals, so it isn't as finicky as one might think having read that answer. Healing shines with 10 endurance templates, especially with 100 coord and focus. The skill check to fail or succeed at healing is healing skill vs the difference between your current health and max health. There is also an additional modifier that increases your chance to fail when below 50% health and when below 25% health (to my knowledge.) A common belief is that raising your health actually nerfs your healing skill. This is only perception and not actually true. The increased failure rate is a result of being more sloppy about healing with higher amounts of health. For example, if you have 100 health, and get hit for 51 points of damage, the difficulty to heal is 51 plus the modifier for being below half health, or approximately 76 (estimating.) If you have 200 health and get hit for 51, the difficulty is only 51 with no penalty for being below half health. When in tough combat, lets say you get hit for 175 with a shockwave and a vuln on. With the same base 200 health you're looking at a difficulty of 175 plus the modifier for being below 25% health, but with 100 health you'd be dead! Even at 180 health, the difficulty to heal is still 175 plus the same modifier for being under 25% (or possibly more if that modifer is scaled for anything under 50% heath). You can see that there is no increased failure rate for higher health. People perceive healing to be worse at high health values because they generally wait longer to heal than they do with lower health values, but there is no mathmatical justification for not raising health for fear of nerfing your healing skill. Most players keep healing kits on a hotkey next to a their main pack on a hotkey so they can fire off a heal by simply hitting 2-1 at any time (or 8-9 for you weirdos).
Item Enchantment
Focus+Self/4
8 points to train, 8 points to specialize.
Rating: Uber skill. Must have for all templates
Specialize? No
Item provides all your portal spells, saving you countless hours running, and allowing you to reach places that would otherwise take hours at the push of a button. Additionally item magic can turn a practice weapon into a death-dealing beater stick. Item can turn a faran robe, shirt, pants, and gloves into armor good enough for any non-hollow monsters in the game. Item magic can turn an al 10 buckler into the equivalent of a 10 foot thick cement barrior, reducing all melee and missile damage to zero, sometimes even with vulns and imperil on. This skill allows you to turn basically a big pile of junk into a wearable fortress of invulnerability while dealing out massive damage to anything you can hit. I highly doubt we'll see level VII spells added for this skill, but as it stands it is an extremely powerful skill and provides almost complete independance from equipment with the exception of Life Magic protections and Creature spells. All by itself it is enough to hunt non-spellcasters with relative impuny.
Life Magic
Focus+Self/4
12 points to train, 8 points to specialize.
Specialize? Yes for high level solo play. Yes for mages. Preferable for PVP. No for group aventurers
Rating: Uber Skill. Must have for all templates.
Life magic is one of the most controversial skills in the game. Early into retail it was seen as being too powerful because of drains and harms. Later it was thought to be too powerful for protects and vulns. Currently it is thought to be too powerful for imperils. Life magic has also come under fire because of drain/harm macros coming into the game. Life magic provides all the trainsfer/drain/revitalize/heal spells. We refer to the health, stamina, and mana bars as buckets. Life magic is the skill that allows you to move things from one bucket to another, to refil a bucket that is low, or to take fuel from another monster's or player's bucket and put it into yours. As long as your buckets stay full, you are in good shape. That is the primary function of life magic as a mage. Because of the power of these spells, a typical mages health will look like 230,110,50,230,60,220,100,40,200 in a matter if 2-3 seconds of combat. This is one of the primary draws of mage players, the large amounts of damage taken and dished out in a short period of time, combined with bucket management make combat take constant attention, sort of like a weird game of tetris. This part of life magic is all about trying to keep your buckets full while enemies try to empty them. Life magic also contains vulns to increase damage as much as 150%, and the almighty imperil spell which can increase damage dramatically, allowing you to kill most legacy monsters in one hit with almost any weapon. Newer monsters have better AI and counter vulns and imperils with the appropriate protects, but the value of life magic for protects and transfers alone justifies the cost of training it. As with item magic, this is a skill that allows one character to cast a few spells and go get his equipment back from a corpse, while a character without it runs around begging for help and buffs and loot. New content really mandates this skill, as high level quests are generally on 2 minute respawns with extreme combat situations. This means that regardless of your friend's best intentions and willingness to buff you, there simply won't be time to cast the spells needed to bring someone incabable of buffing themselves. Life magic can replace hundreds of master robes and death items over a character's life, as well as prevent the loss of death items in the first place.
Mana Conversion
Focus+Self/6
6 points to train, 6 more to specialize
Specialize? Can't say. One of the few things in the game people still debate about. Everyone who has had a high level spec'd conversion character swears by it. Those who haven't think it is a waste.
Rating: Highly useful. Mandatory for mages. Convenience skill for archers and melees.
Mana conversion reduces the mana cost to cast spells, down to as little as 1 mana per spell for a 70 mana cost spell. Since melee and archer characters are not required to cast spells while in the heat of combat except in a few extreme solo situations, they don't need to worry too much about conserving mana as it only effects their buffing time. Mages on the other hand almost cannot live without it. Adventuring for a high level mage consists of casting nonstop spells for hours in a row. Without mana conversion a mage would spend probably 90% of his time trying to recover mana instead of actually fighitng (unless he has healing for health to mana transfers). High mana conversion allows mages to squeeze off level VI spells with 1-3 mana, a priceless skill for PK or in any dungeon with a large population of draining mobs (ie wisps, and undead). Even for the melee or archer it is desirable as it greatly speeds up buffing, allows for imperilling in combat, and most importantly, allows you to cast recalls when drained to just a few mana. There is nothing more annoying than finishing a quest or a dungeon, getting swarmed by a respawn of monsters and not being able to recall because you have 40 mana and no conversion. If you don't train this skill, keep mana elixirs or some hearty famous mana pizzas on a hotkey for those mana emergencies.
Melee Defense:
Coord + Quickness/3
10 points to train, 10 more to specialize.
Specialize? Never
Rating: Uber skill Must have for Archers, recommended for melees, convenience skill for mages.
Melee Defense is a skill I commonly refer to as being broken. It is far too cheap. One of the basic rules for any game is that you always make attack skills cheaper than defensive skills, thus promoting death and a winner in every fight. By making the cost for melee defense the same as for melee attacks, you set up a 50/50 relationship that makes every melee vs melee battle a draw. Draws aren't fun. People should win quickly or die trying. The fact that defense mod spells have higher economy than attack mod spells, combined with extra melee defense bonuses on UA weapons actually skews these battles in favor of nobody getting hurt at all with melee. This is a skill I would never specialize, because at 300 buffed trained skill (achievable with even 10 coord and 10 quickness templates) combined with defender VI and a +8% defense weapon, you have a +25% bonus to defense or +75 to skill. You can see that the basically free defense mods are more than twice as valuable as specialization for even the lowest possible trained melee defense skill. At higher skills for 100 coord characters you can easilty evade almost every monster currently in the game. The defense modifiers make all the difference between never evading and evading 100%, which is why this skill will be at least 75 points weaker on a mage with a wand than on a melee or an archer. There is still justification for training it on a mage as there are monsters that are far easier to kill with racial melee than with magic, and you can gain the full benefits of the defense mods while meleeing just like any melee can gain the full benefits of being a mage while casting. I'm really opposed to specializing melee defense as the improvement from 99% evades for trained to 100% evades for specialized isn't really even noticable for a cost of 10 skill credits. Pure melees with 100 10 100 100 10 10 templates do argue that specializing is worthwhile, and I'm going to guess this is because they don't cast defender or invuln and tend to be more reliant on lore than buffing. If you're not going to be buffed, then of course every point makes a difference since you've given up the free +75 to +120ish melee defense you get from maxed defense mods on your weapons. Melee's rating as an uber skill comes from the fact that it is capable of reducing damage from 10,000+ to zero, works against hollows, is a passive skill that is always active regardless of whether you are even at the keyboard, and due to broken cost formula and defense mods, it is able to reach truly godlike levels where you are almost invulnerable to melee attacks even with gimped starting stats. Even on a 10 coord 10 quickness mage melee defense has reached the point where I can evade tuskers 10% of the time and olthoi 90% of the time with a wand in my hand. This frees up more time for casting killing spells and less time wasted draining to keep health/stamina/mana levels up. Even if you only evade the average monster half the time, that's the equivalent of doubling your effective health vs melee attacks. This skills I'd call 100% mandatory for archers, helpful for mages, but not terribly because of the lack of defense mods, and ALMOST optional for melees because of shields. If you're melee and want tank 100's of monsters at once (the fun stuff :) ), you want to have melee defense. If you're patient and don't mind limitting yourself to 2-3 high level monsters at a time, you can do without this skill as a melee, or train it very late in life. Taking this approach requires very good gear (specifically a nice shield) or level IV+ spells for buffing. Contrary to popular belief, melee defense does not reduce the odds of successful attack by a monster being a critical hit.
Spear
Coord+Strength/3
Four points to train, four more to specialize.
Rating: Train Staff instead
Specialize? Yes if you train it at all, you should specialize it.
Spear is more or less identical to staff for damage over time, but you don't get a bludgeoning attack and it costs four more points than staff to specialize (or train). While capable of doing good damage at high levels, spear hasn't come through with any real reason to take it instead of staff except for role-playing reasons. Spear is the best weapon currently available for tilting at windmills.
Staff
Coord+Strength/3
Free to train (Gharu) 4 points to specialize
Rating: Very good melee attack value for cost
Specialize? Yes if it is your primary attack form. Yes if you have room to specialize it in your template and start with high supporting attributes.
Staff has a huge damage range due to the atlan staff with its 25% damage variance. With BD VI staff does approximately 26-34 damage, putting it into the same catagory as sword for damage. The two main disadvantages of staff are that you are limitted to atlans with no attack/defense mods and staff has no slashing or piercing attack forms. Staff speed is relatively slow, but the hard hitting power makes it an excellent weapon for the cost. The primary bludgeoning attack type is the most useful attack type in the game and makes the atlan staff of black fire the best of the no-drop weapons currently available.
Sword
Coordination+Strength/3
8 points to train, 8 more to specialize
Rating: Uber, yet not worth the cost.
Specialize? Unfortunately yes. Almost as badly overpriced as war, but it should be specialized as a primary attack.
Sword is the king of the big damage weapons. It is also the second most commonly complained about skill as far as the benefits vs cost. There are more quest swords than any other melee weapon in the game, including Ashbane, The Overlord's Sword (12-23 base damage), and the infamous SOLL. Despite this most sword-slingers complain that every single one of these quest swords is a piece of junk, including the Sword of Lost Light with all the infusion upgrades. Sword's biggest weakness is no bludgeoning attack, combined with the fact that bludgeoning is the most common attack form of choice. Sword has a full power piercing attack, and recently was given the option to add a quest hilt to items to give them double-strike capability. The double-strike rapiers are EXTREMELY powerful and make sword the most efficient tusker-killing weapon in-game currently. While the extremely powerful attack option for a single weapon is great, sword is still limitted to damage ranges similar to far cheaper weapons with all non-hilted swords.
Unarmed Combat
Coord+Strength/3
Free to train(Sho), 6 points to specialize.
Rating: Very good melee attack value for cost. Uber as a primary attack form in PVP.
Specialize? Yes as a primary attack form. Yes if you can afford it without sacrificing needed skills.
Unarmed combat shines at levels 1-30 and again at levels 70+ due to it being far faster than any other attack form at low levels, and due to it being the only melee skill where skill increase also directly increases damage. At mid levels most players have become fast enough to overcome the slower speeds of their weapons and the higher damage actually makes up for the advantage UA ges in speed. From levels 30-70 UA can lag other weapons but is pretty much on par with most. Unarmed combat gets an extra 5% bonus to melee defense from the loot-generated weapons, but no bonuses on the atlans. UA has the worst damage variance of any weapon in the game, and this can be annoying when you have a bad string of low damage hits. The hollow kater is generally accepted as the best of the hollow weapons by far, mostly due to the skill bonus to damage. Unarmed combat gets all seven attack types. The large number of small advantages unarmed combat gets add up to a big difference in performance compared to most weapons. The biggest drawback to unarmed combat is the rarity of good non-atlan UA weapons due to demand.
War Magic
Focus+Self/4
16 points to train, 12 more to specialize. Oh the pain.
Rating: Yuck
Specialize? Oh dear God no.
War magic isn't nearly as bad as I rate it at low level, but at high levels it becomes relatively useless. For starters war magic requires a skill check to be able to cast it, a second skill check to be able to effect a monster, a third skill check vs conversion if your mana is low, and on top of all that it can miss outright due to its bad pathing. The general rule with war magic is you cannot hit anything that is moving. That means you can get one free shot at a monster before it attacks you (but usually you would cast a yield or a vuln instead of opening a battle up with war). After the first spell is cast you won't be able to effect the monster again until it reaches you and has started attacking (unless it stays put and uses a ranged attack). War magic does low damage compared to any other primary attack form unless you use vulns. Of course most primary attack forms will do more damage than war with vulns as well, but vulns are currently the accepted way of making your war magic reasonably effective. The advantage to war magic is it provides all seven attack types, and war magic completely ignores monster AL, only being reduced by the monster's inherent resistance to particular damage types. It is the most expensive skill in the game, and has the highest cost to specialize as well. In addition to the many skill checks you need to pass before landing a succesful attack, and having to do those same skill checks earlier to land a vuln, war magic is slower than any other attack form in the game. When grouping war magic is seldom used at all because all other attack forms usually kill targets before your war spell even casts. If this wasn't enough to discourage you from training war (being a mage), there are several dungeons in the game that contain monsters with 100% invulnerability to magic in any form other than blood drinkered weapons (ie all other primary attack skills.) One of these dungeons is the only source of the spell component grade chorizite. Still thinking about training war? War and life magic (the vulns you need to make your war do damage) are both usually inepted (-35 to skill) in all high level combat situations. War and life inept are currently the only primary skill inepts that monsters cast, making anything but war or life the preferable attack type. If you do choose to train war, you will require creature, life, and mana conversion to support your war skill. While the picture I've painted is pretty bleak, it is relatively effective at levels 1-50 against monsters that do not cast inepts and do not have 100% resistance to magic. As a finaly bit of warning, earlier this week a level 106 friend of mine with specialized war magic got resisted 54 times in a row by an augmented drudge (level 80 or so). After all this, I should add the the extreme nerfing and neglect that war magic has suffered over the past year must certainly come to an end and start to turn around soon. Then again, this is what I thought almost eight months ago and the situation for high level mages has only gotten progressively worse. Every time you think you see a light at the end of the tunnel for war magic, it turns out to be another oncoming train. Recently more new war spells were added that have a casting difficulty of 300 (you want 320+ to consider using these in combat, 355+ when inepted) and do 110-180 damage if they hit. This "buff" is almost useless to fix this broken skill as pure damage dealt has never been a problem with war magic.