My first two characters on the mud got tattoos. I had Shokai's tattoo and Twist's tattoo. They were in cabals, and I explored like a maniac. 90% of my knowledge of Thera comes from those two original characters. I never ONCE practiced skills to perfection with any character, save for my master and Twist made me do it! Trewyn had a role reason to perfect all of his weapons, but that was it. The rest I just got to a "reasonable level of reliability". I remember looking over my skill list of a storm giant axe spec and noticed that dodge was at 96 when I was rank 46. I still could kill people. I never once understood the practicing trap. Sure there are certain skills that MUST be perfected. Those being skills like sing and the invoker spells. Shapeshift is HANDY if you get it perfected, but I wouldn't spam it for the life of me. I tend to do a lot of solo exploration when the competition's hot for me, so I get my practice in there. When my range looks sick, look for me in the most obscure places.

Trewyn