Does anyone else..

[Jauna]

Relentlessly work on combat skills as they level up to the point where it stops being fun or worse yet you start to fall behind on skills because you were dumb enough to make a puller tier type character?

My ranger just hit 40 and realized my combat skills are behind a few levels now
and holy crap my monk is level 35 now and tail rake and flying kick are still not maxed out

[loramin]

Whenever I start a new melee character I always equip them with one weapon of every major type that they'll use, so for instance I'll give my Ranger a 1HS, a 2HS, a piercing weapon, and maybe even a 1HB (plus a bow of course). Then I tell myself that I'm going to keep switching between those weapons as I level so that I can keep all of my melee skills up, and for the first few levels I do.

Flash forward 20 levels: all of the weapons except the one with the best ratio are collecting dust in a backpack ... but I still carry them and their weight around for no good reason. Meanwhile the only skill I have maxed is the one for the good weapon, and the rest of my weapon skills are like 30 max.

One of these days I'm going to get a new awesome weapon that isn't the main one I've been using, and I'm going to have to waste several hours beating on light blue mobs to fix my skills. Maybe when that happens I'll finally learn my lesson ...

[Swish2]

Raiding (trash clearing) is the best time to sneak these skills to max...nobody will notice ^^

[fadetree]

Yep, same here. I was a ranger main pretty much from the beginning, and the deal was then that you were supposed to work hard to make sure that all your weapon skills were maxed...it was a ranger thing, a point of pride and good preparation since you never know what kind of weap you might run into in those days. Still do it.
Now, CASTING skills....not so much. I always get burned by conj or something and have to sit around for hours casting true north or fireflies or whatever.

[Foxplay]

On caster classes If i have a skill fall way behind i will literally spend hours just spamming low level spells of each type until they are maxed

When my druid got his epic i spent nearly a whole day killing deep blue con mobs, ensnaring them when they went into flee mode and endlessly swinging at them with his sword to max 1HS (despite druid melee skill being basically worthless)

So essentially no.... I let my skills fall super behind but then do them all at the same time later via spamming later on

[Jauna]

Oof Conjuration on a ranger. thats a days dedication right there. one reliable spell, has a cooldown and gob earring kinda helps but not really. Not fun, had to work on Abjuration with it side by side and selling a buncha crap in EC one day.

[Swish2]

Best way to do spells/feign death/etc is literally put a movie/youtube video on, and spam cast while not looking.

[Tethler]

When I'm on a group waitlist I equip my weapons with unmaxxed skill levels and hit mobs till my spot comes up. People kept inspecting my rogue wielding 2 cracked staffs I bought off the vendor wondering wtf class I was.

[jolanar]

I keep up with them until about the mid 30s. That's when they are high enough they can be caught up pretty easy later on, and also when using your best ratio weapon becomes more important.

[mefdinkins]

I used to be pretty worried about stuff like this. Ever wonder why someone is running wild in EC jumping off the rooftop? Yeah, dude is probably getting up his safe fall.

Now days though, in my opinion, everything will level in due time. I've played my monk enough that safe fall is maxed from a combination of jumping off stuff for fun, falling down hills, jumping around EC tunnel. Disarm is up from just killing random stuff. Combat skills will get up if you really need them. If I really find myself in need of some random skill on one of my chars I can take the time to get it up when I need it. I was lucky to get the Koi dagger for my bard - which is pretty awesome but realized pretty quickly I had like 40 skill in piercing - oh well it got up quick. Pretty sure my ench hit 51 and fizzled the first 30 minutes of my first ever full group in KC because I had soloed to 50 and rarely used some of his skills - but they all got maxed pretty quick - sorry bros.

There are some exceptions to my it will get up on its own theory. For lockpicking - you'll need to go out of your way to make sure you get that up high enough to be useful. If you go to Befallen you can max out lockpicking so you can pick the few locks that matter in the game - VP, Seb, CoM, HS. For swimming, if you just run around zones like Oasis or chase mobs in the water in Lake Rathe you can get your skills up slowly. However, if you're going to XP in Kedge or underwater in Siren's Grotto, you might need to max that out ASAP. Finally, for specializing your casting skills once you hit the appropriate level - you're going to want to get the skill you need up so you don't have to deal with any problems or respeccing later.