Ok. I've died so much lately I'm pretty tired of it. I need to fix my skills and I'm honestly not sure what to do. Here's what I've got.

Name: **** Race: Dark Elf Profession: Sorcerer (not shown)
Gender: Male Age: 102 Expr: 3686274 Level: 62
Normal (Bonus) ... Enhanced (Bonus)
Strength (STR): 96 (23) ... 96 (23)
Constitution (CON): 49 (-5) ... 39 (-10)
Dexterity (DEX): 71 (20) ... 71 (20)
Agility (AGI): 79 (19) ... 79 (19)
Discipline (DIS): 90 (10) ... 90 (10)
Aura (AUR): 100 (35) ... 105 (37)
Logic (LOG): 92 (21) ... 92 (21)
Intuition (INT): 94 (27) ... 94 (27)
Wisdom (WIS): 100 (30) ... 105 (32)
Influence (INF): 94 (17) ... 94 (17)

skill
**** (at level 62), your current skill bonuses and ranks (including all modifiers) are:
Skill Name | Current Current
| Bonus Ranks
Armor Use..........................| 40 8
Physical Fitness...................| 102 24
Arcane Symbols.....................| 163 63
Magic Item Use.....................| 163 63
Spell Aiming.......................| 226 126
Harness Power......................| 226 126
Elemental Mana Control.............| 163 63
Spirit Mana Control................| 163 63
Spiritual Lore - Summoning.........| 180 80
Perception.........................| 163 63
Climbing...........................| 120 30
Swimming...........................| 120 30

Spell Lists
Minor Elemental....................| 43

Spell Lists
Minor Spiritual....................| 30

Spell Lists
Sorcerer...........................| 62
Training Points: 77 Phy 0 Mnt (1612 Phy converted to Mnt)
(Use SKILLS BASE to display unmodified ranks and goals)

Thanks in advance for any advice.
Z

Where are you hunting? Could be your tactics and what you are hunting.
-Stronghold is one of the most unfriendly places for a sorcerer to hunt. Ewave is your friend here to keep the illoyke on their backs so when you kill them, they won't crush you. Zhelas carried imbedded rods with ewave in them.
-Spell Tank.
-use the PEER verb to peer into the next room. This atleast will give you a heads up to what you are fighting.
-Set Aim to a limb. I recommend the right arm. Why? When you cast 708 at a creature it will then remove the right arm. 99% of the creatures will become helpless and they can't attack or use their combat maneuvers. Greater Krynches will still use the boulder maneuver and Earth Elementals can still attack you even without any limbs.
-crowd control. Swarms will kill.
-703 If certain casters are giving you grief this will buy you time. Even at Cap Zhelas will use 703 on Triton Sentries to prevent them from casting focused implosion.

What society have you joined? COL? Voln? Sunfist?
-COL has great mechanics.
-Sunfist has some great benefits too. However if you are going this route make sure you are 1x in physical fitness.
-Voln? There are a lot of new changes to this society. There are some voln sorcerers out there. I will let them chime in and speak its praise.

I see that you are 2x in harness power.
- It is expensive to get that 1 point of extra mana per train.
- If you are COL, being 1x in harness power is plenty of mana. Sign of wracking will give you extra mana.
- Even if you are Voln reducing your harness power down to 1.5x will yield you extra points to put elsewhere.

I see you are more than 1x on Spiritual Summoning lores and have no Sorcerer lores. Why?
- Spiritual summoning lores are good for web bolting, speeding up call lightning, aiding in 116, better landing zones for 130 and spirit fire. These are good tools but unless you are doing this for roleplay reasons I don't see why you have 80 ranks so soon. If you want it for web bolting alone, 20 ranks is all you need. The benefits of spiritual summoning lores came out 3 or 4 years ago. So many sorcerers have capped with zero spiritual summoning lores and it became a post cap goal of many to get 91 ranks or so.
- Sorcerer lores:
-Demonology. At the bare minimum I recommend having 52 ranks. Why? at 50 ranks your retribution will fire off 95% of the time. Those extra 2 ranks will put you at the next Tier of phasing items. You also need it for minor demon summoning and with that the bonus of using Baelfire. Also it will reduce your failure if you use spell 740.
-Necromancy: With the release of 735 not having any necromancy lores is almost criminal. There are benefits for having this lore. Getting blood from 701. Animates disrupted limbs. Spell 711 (Pain) This is one of our best spells in our arsenal. When a creature is put into excruciating pain, it will lose 35% of hits hit points and put it into hard round time. Animate Dead has its place. This spell may not interest you but with necromancy lores animating a creature or a dead adventurer can be useful.
-Recommendation: Either nix Spiritual Summoning lores or reduce it down to 20 and make it a post cap goal to get more. Be 1x in Sorcerer lores. So that means 52 Demon Summoning at a min. Then either continue to be 1x in demon summoning. Many swear by it. If you go the Demonologist route. Get 1 rank of Necromancy so you get the benefits of 701. Or Change to necromancy lores and that would give you 11 ranks at your current train.

Being fully 1x in perception is nice but .5x pre cap is plenty.

Are you having CS issues?
-Be as close as you can be to 2.4x in spell research
-Get your Sorcerer Circle about 20 ranks above your current train. Anymore than that this early on will yield diminishing returns.

Physical Fitness:
-Some folks will swear that being 1x in it for life is mandatory. There are benefits for doing so. Stamina for Sunfist Sigils. It is a hidden factor in climbing and swimming success. Defense against combat maneuvers. Stun recovery. Health recovery. How quickly you recover from spell 130.
-Do you need to be 1x in physical fitness? Your Training points are tight as is. It is completely possible to reach cap without being fully 1x in physical fitness. It will be a little challenging but then again it depends on your hunting tactics.


Peace
Zhelas

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(Lord Paladin walks around Droit examining his equipment.)
Lord Paladin: How does he....How does he work?

Alright! Great advice and I appreciate the breakdown of "why" you suggest the things you do rather than just saying, "this is what you need". As for the hunting aspect I've tried all over and I suspect you are correct that my tactics are probably not very sharp. I tried Stronghold many years ago and got so frustrated I quit trying to hunt completely. I spent a bit of time in Ta'Vaalor and had some decent success with the vipers/boars/ogres. I was recently told to give Skull Temple a shot and I've had mixed results in there. My CS seems to be a bit weak and good old Simu's loaded dice that roll 45 or under 90% of the time frustrate me to no end. I was also advised to use 703 on everything (that casts) as soon as possible and that has helped immensely. I admit, its probably Sorc 101 and one of the first spells a young sorc should be familiar with but give me a little break, I've been gone almost 10 years. :) As for hunting strats, in Skull Temple I usually toss 703 on the dogmatists and hierophants asap, and a few nights ago rediscovered the love of guarded stance curses to push their TD down a bit more. Supplicants I typically 708 and blow off a leg. They are pretty simple to deal with then. I usually channel 702 at em till they die. Hieros get some DC love, usually one shot of it that actually wards, and then finish with 702. Dogmatists are a pain in the rear. They are quite a bit higher so they are tougher to ward. I usually try DC and if all else fails just aimed implode em and that works fairly well. Most of my recent deaths have been from hierophants and their spike thorn which they seem to always manage to sneak off the second after 703 drops and I'm stuck in a hard cast rt from channeling 702. If the initial hit doesn't crit kill me they usually follow it up with another that is guaranteed death, whether its from blood loss or a crit.

Send me a thought tonight. I will be in game most of the night and I am in illistrim. I know a warrior that can put puncture resistance on your armor as long as it isnt better than hcp. This will offer some protection vs spike thorn. As ogres go. Hunt them in the trees. No boars there.

Try removing the right arm instead of the legs. All creatures are right handed and when that arm is on the ground, they can't cast...swing a weapon or use combat maneuvers.

Peace
Zhelas

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(Lord Paladin walks around Droit examining his equipment.)
Lord Paladin: How does he....How does he work?

>Try removing the right arm instead of the legs. All creatures are right handed and when that arm is on the ground, they can't cast...swing a weapon or use combat maneuvers.

Sage advice, but at 62 hunting ogres in the trees (I'm 62, and did a few hunts there for bounties recently), I would suggest using 706 instead. They are so darn easy to ward that either spell is totally effective, but 706 costs less mana. This is a quibbling point, but I thought I'd just throw it out there. I could even see preferring 708 in this are purely for stylistic reasons =). In any case I strongly suggest going to this area to get your sorcerer legs again, as it's very forgiving. I would even indiscriminately 706 the vipers when I hunted there just to avoid the chance of getting hit by their maneuver attack. You can simply set your F1 macro as prep 706\rcast at viper\r and F2 as prep 706\rcast at ogre.

Player of Kilshaar

This is how my 78 sorcerer's training looks:

Armor Use- 8 ranks
Physical Fitness- 1x
Arcane Symbols- 1x
Magic Item Use- 1.5x
Spell Aiming- 2x
Harness Power- 1x
Elemental Mana Control- 1x
Spirit Mana Control- 1x
Spiritual Lore - Summoning - ZERO
Perception- 1x
Climbing- 30ish ranks
Swimming- 50 ranks cause I am getting ready for later, could be less.
Sorcerer Lore Necro - 25 ranks to try out ensorcell energy gains
Sorcerer Lore Demon - 50 ranks for travelling with 740

Spell Lists
Minor Elemental....................| 51

Spell Lists
Minor Spiritual....................| 40

Spell Lists
Sorcerer...........................| 98

Alkire

>INF is all related to non-combat systems. At least I can't think of any combat systems that use it. I think it is safe to say that most people tank their INF stat.

You make good points about CON, but pre-cap if you crunch for TPs and weight for mental (which you would want to do if you were going to bother crunching TPs), you'll wind up with high influence. This route sacrifices the things you mention, but contributes to more flexible training. Both have their pros and CONs (couldn't resist). I'd have to put it through the spreadsheet, but at level 62 I imagine the difference in MTPs when tanking CON instead of INF is nothing to sneeze at.

The best thing to do, of course, is put your build through the spreadsheet, figure out what training you want, and compare the situation with both stat setups. Then you can weight the extra MTPs versus the benefits Mekki discusses an make the call (assuming you might want to get a fixstat).

Player of Kilshaar

>>INF is all related to non-combat systems. At least I can't think of any combat systems that use it. I think it is safe to say that most people tank their INF stat.

Along with DIS, INF bonus is part of the standard success resolution system for targeted Voln and GoS abilities. Such symbols and sigils are probably not frequent tools in most sorcerers' arsenals, but there it is.

Know that the influence stat does not help in the defense against Warcries, however.

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!>tell child to be quiet
The child cries, "I don't wanna!"