Im an old player. Im used to the old skills, and all my chars are skilled with old skills wich I have mastered. Nowadays I see everyone running around with their ninja stars and wooden armor spamming strange words and doing weird stuff by using skills like bushido, ninja, chivalry and spellweaving. Everyone with these skills seem to beat me easily at anything.

Isnt my magery and animal taming good enough anymore? Do I have to throw away my classic setup for some stupid ninja skills? What do you think about this?

magery and taming is still very viable magery is great for pvp and pvm while tamming is mostly used for pvm if anyhting your gear just probley is the only thingthats needs a little updating and your quick macro fingers

Depends what you wanna do! Mage/tamers still rock at pvm. If pvp is more your style than you may want to do some research on what works the best these days. There are still some great pvp'ers out there using classic skills!

Im only into pvm. My gear is a 70resist/100lrc suit with a bunch of fc and recovery. At the Magicina event I don't even do enough damage to get loot rights. That was with EV's and explosion though. Trying pets today.

Just seems like everyone got swords + bushido + chiv + ninja + spellweave + archery and everything in one nasty little package. I don't want these skills unless they are necessary, so if you think old skills also work, I will stick to the old setup

I only PvM, and despite trying really hard, had to give up and add chivalry to my 'pure armsman' template. The difference in damage output is extremely high, and as a soloer find I need it, especially against the newer creatures.

I'd suggest looking at it, training up to a mid level isn't hard and you can soulstone it out if you decide against it, but for me it's been a lifesaver many, many times.

The other skills I've added to characters just because they fit the character - my magery and necromancy primary also trained spellweaving, since it fir the idea of a 'magic obsessed' person, not because it made the template "better". My samurai took bushido purely because he's a samurai,same for my ninja... but chivalry just turned out to be too useful to avoid

As a dexxer I concurr with Aurelius - you need either Chiv, Bushido or Ninja in your template as a melee fighter. I chose chivalry, because my swordman was meant to be that kind of heoric waarior from the start.
For my tamer, I still use only classic skills (magery, peacemaking, animal taming). my Archer has Chiv out of usefulness and Spellweaving is fun when you are several spellweavers but is quite useless when you're alone.
I tried a bushido fencer out of curiosity but never play her.
And my crafter still is a smith and tailor of course.

Well, a dexer could very easily adapt. Necro fighters just need two skills (necro and spirit speak) ontop of the regulair weapon/tactics/healing/anatomy. A paladin is easier with just one skill: chivalry.

I used to have magery on all my chars just for recalls. And maybe a little healing. But a necro can momentarily shift into wraith form to get a recall w/o the need of magery. And a paladin can heal, "recall," and cure poison with his chivalry. I never JUST used a recall scroll charge in a rune book.

A really handy char is a stealth/hiding/ninjitsu archer. I keep getting caught unawares by reds who use this template.

I've also noticed tamers carrying spell channeling weapon & SC shield. In the past , all mages just had wrestling. But an acher tamer/mage (archery, tactics, veterinary, magery, evalint, animal lore, animal taming) might be viable if you don't mind being soaked without magic resist or meditation. (You don't have to GM all skills.)

Hmm.. I used to like having partial skills. 50 med, 90 magery, 90 evalint, 90 archery, 90 tac, GM veternary (resing pets), GM magic resist (you wanna tame magical monsters, right?), gives you 610 skills. So toss in 90 hiding?

I'm thinking too much and talking too little...

Hmm.. I used to like having partial skills. 50 med, 90 magery, 90 evalint, 90 archery, 90 tac, GM veternary (resing pets), GM magic resist (you wanna tame magical monsters, right?), gives you 610 skills. So toss in 90 hiding?

Am I missing the taming /lore here?

It's not you, its everyone. The invaders are mighty tough it seems milady!

Skrekkugle, I just love your nick !

I was also wondering about the topic when I came back a year ago. Still I don't pay much attention do the new armours and items, so guess I don't have much to add here
My pvm outfit still costs about 2k usually, simple spined leather armour. I never adapted I guess.. but verrry curious about the new stuff.