Practice Points

[Grasmere]

What is the point of spending Skill points with associated costs when you automatically gain points as you level? Is it a method to increase the skill at an earlier level?

[Barm McLir]

Some skills are level capped (usually level * 5 + 5). For example Swimming is capped a 55 for a level 10 character.
Some are not, like Sense Heading which you can raise to 200 at level 1.
Skills that kick in a certain levels, like Dodge, you have to spend 1 training point at you class trainer before they will increase from usage.

You will end up with a surplus of training points. A good use for them is to buy the first 20 points in a tradeskill. Or maybe buying the remaining points in defensive skills if you're a class that doesn't get punched a lot. Note that buying training costs more as the skill number increases. You cannot buy above your current cap for level capped skills.

[Llandris]

Like the poster stated above, saving them for tradeskills helps. I always dump like 11 pts into sense heading on all my characters as well.

[Grasmere]

Thanks. I have sense heading maxed but I am a L16 Druid and as Barm McLir pointed out I don't get punched a lot and so would spending points in Evocation, Alteration and Channeling help?

[Barm McLir]

Yep. You can absolutely take Sense Heading to 200 on a level 1 without spending any points. You will also doubt this is true long before you get better at Sense Heading (1)!

[Grasmere]

He hee. Yes. It was well spent during medding times.

[Raavak]

Some skills don't start self-learning unless you put at least a point in them. Meditate is the biggy there. I don't know what else, I usually train most standard skills at least 1.

[Grasmere]

Originally Posted by Raavak [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Some skills don't start self-learning unless you put at least a point in them. Meditate is the biggy there. I don't know what else, I usually train most standard skills at least 1.

Yes Raavak that's true but is there any point in spending valuable Plat on raising a defensive skill if it increases exponentially as you level?

[Barm McLir]

Nah, as a caster you wont have to worry about spending points in magical skills. If your're leveling quickly, find a cheap to cast spell in each school you're lacking (say divination and conjuration) and just make a macro like this

We'll put 'Sense Animals' (5 mana, divination) in Spell Slot 1 and 'Dance of the Fireflies' (10 mana, conjuration) in Spell Slot 2 and make a macro like this.

/pause 25, /cast 1
/pause 25, /cast 2

The pause command is weird -- it is the only command you can combine on the same line as another (in this /cast) and it pauses at the completion of the macro line. So you'll cast 'Sense Animal' and pause 2.5 seconds (to wait on the 2 second global cooldown on spell gems + .5 seconds of fudge to deal with network/server/client delays).

You can repeat these lines or add something else you want to train. If you get a message that you haven't recovered yet or the spells refresh timer has not been met you need to play with the delays. This will give you a Training button you can spam while reading the fine forums at Project1999.com.

[Grasmere]

Originally Posted by Barm McLir [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Nah, as a caster you wont have to worry about spending points in magical skills. If your're leveling quickly, find a cheap to cast spell in each school you're lacking (say divination and conjuration) and just make a macro like this

We'll put 'Sense Animals' (5 mana, divination) in Spell Slot 1 and 'Dance of the Fireflies' (10 mana, conjuration) in Spell Slot 2 and make a macro like this.

/pause 25, /cast 1
/pause 25, /cast 2

The pause command is weird -- it is the only command you can combine on the same line as another (in this /cast) and it pauses at the completion of the macro line. So you'll cast 'Sense Animal' and pause 2.5 seconds (to wait on the 2 second global cooldown on spell gems + .5 seconds of fudge to deal with network/server/client delays).

You can repeat these lines or add something else you want to train. If you get a message that you haven't recovered yet or the spells refresh timer has not been met you need to play with the delays. This will give you a Training button you can spam while reading the fine forums at Project1999.com.

Wow! Thanks for the heads up on this. Very helpful indeed.