As much as lvling is important, skills are ever more so. Not only does it give massive stat boosts, but allows you to raise your skills lvl's, but use newer, more powerful skill. Lvling only gives you 5 stat points and lets you access new areas.
All in all, I believe skill lvling is is better than lvl.
Current lvl 91 Sword: A Expert 43/80 Magic: A Master 34/112
punching enemies is really slow, but it gives skill xp for both sword and magic, but i never use it.
when the beta was out, i was just lvling (for the contest) so i know that skill lvling is much more important than regular lvling, also if you have high skill lvl's then regular lvling goes much faster.
use dummies as much as possible for the 30% of the max skills, after you reach lvl 90 that 30% cap gets taken off, but you get very little xp from the dummies (i don't know if i'm still getting the same amount as before for under 30%, i think that still goes up just as fast as before). right now i've been just leaving my computer on and skilling at the dummies overnight, but the once the dummy dies i'm not awake to change who it's attacking.
OceanWave, for you skill lvling is probably the best idea, because once you hit lvl 65 and can go to fort ruina, there is one monster there that's really easy to lvl at, especially since you are a wizard, but you will want to get your skill lvl's up as high as possible for that (also they will be red, i think, when you first go to fort ruina, because they are the 3rd strongest monsters there). if you want to just normal lvl at port lux, just attack the bladders (past the golems).
if you are worried about stats, don't be raising magic rank: gives you Int and Dex and max MP raising sword rank: gives you Str and Dex and max HP (that's why people really like the dex potions to move those massive dex increases around)
it's really up to you though, for skills lvl 9 has the lowest cool down time (sometimes lvl 8 has the same but lower attack)
if you are just skill lvling (and you are at the computer) then attack the golems in port lux, those will be good for skill lvling (combo-ing) for a long time.
Current lvl: 93 Sword: Transcender 5/160 Magic: Transcender 20/160
Using Aqua Arrow lvl9: For using the dummys (prem users only) for the first 30%, one skill point takes about 8 min, after the 30% mark (prem users only and lvl 90+) it takes about 50 min per skill point. At transcender every skill point takes the same amount of time to get, i have not timed it, but i'm sure it takes at least an hour, but i pretty sure it's more.
