Miniskills -- worth (mainly damage-reducers, InkMilling, Gathering)?

Xyther

As described in another thread, I'm looking at coming back after a long absence. As such, I'm looking at the skills I have on my character.

Basically I'm trans everything but the damage-reducing Miniskills (Constitution, Thermology, Frost, Antidotes) and these new crafting thingies, InkMilling and Gathering.

Are any of these worth investing into, if I'm not (yet) into super high-end PvP? Or even, if I try to get into that aspect of the game someday, are they worth it then?

I assume InkMilling is OK if you want to be more self-sufficient. I can't imagine there's a huge market for inks as a money-making strategy. And it looks like Gathering is the way you get raw materials for doing InkMilling? (or cooking which I don't even do). So if I can spare the extra gold to buy inks from Rurin (and I have a ton left in my rift anyway), InkMilling is kind of useless? And as such Gathering is also useless?

Thanks!

Sena

Inkmilling has benefits aside from being able to make your own inks (and warpaint and posters). The canvas ability (about 70 lessons in) gives an extra tattoo slot, or two at trans tattoos, calligraphy (~195 lessons) lets you ink tattoos faster, potency (at trans) gives 10 extra charges to any tattoos you ink that use charges. I would at least get the extra tattoo slots from it.

Gathering doesn't provide any mechanical benefit aside from being able to gather resources for inkmilling, cooking, and enchanting (just diamond dust for enchanting). You don't have to cook or mill inks yourself though to get any use out of them, some of those resources (mostly the ones from butchering) sell well enough on their own.

The damage reduction miniskills are useful (especially antidotes if you're sniped a lot in raids), but I'm not sure how important they are, you might be fine without them.

Wessux

You'll be fine without them, but having them makes a nice difference for sure.

Ernam

There are very few artefacts that'll impact your defense, credit for credit, compared to mini skills - at least a few of them. SoA and sip/regen ring might be the only ones.

I strongly recommend trans'ing fitness and/or philosophy, depending on your class, then evenly raising your skill in avoidance and antidotes as you get the lessons for them. After that, thermology is good, and frost/electrical are for the most part only useful vs magi so can be safely minimized early on.

Keep in mind you can get midway through mini skills for a relatively small lesson investment.

You shouldn't spend any lessons on anything past fabled avoidance/antidotes before finishing your class skills and survival.

Trevize

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't mini-skills lesson based for partial bonuses, not skillrank based? As in, 50% of the lessons are required to get 50% of the bonus, not 50% of the skillranks.

Sena

Trevize said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't mini-skills lesson based for partial bonuses, not skillrank based? As in, 50% of the lessons are required to get 50% of the bonus, not 50% of the skillranks.

That seems to be the case for fitness and philosophy (for the increased end/will regen) at least.