I suggest you to search and watch guides on youtube as those are easier to understand than if someone writes a wall of text without pictures here.

Some really basic info to get you an idea what to be aware of.

First read skill descriptions thoroughly, not kidding. Check chain skills, for example massacre chain is illogical to me cause first you need several seconds to trigger massacre while your target can run away and only after you can use dash skill to catch it if still close enough, which usually isn't the case. So you will figure it's mostly useful to use massacre on mobs as first skill to make them move towards you.

You will soon realize devotion is vital and that you must use it whenever off cd, unless you wait to use it together with backstabbing skill or some particular combo. MAin point is use devotion a lot! Also you will soon see that bloodthirster surprise attack (BSA) chain is the one that can do really huge damage compared to other skills and one of basic attack combo to quickly kill mob is to use devotion then swift ambush, BSA chain and shadowfall. If you are too slow triggering shadowfall, you can also use it after ambush (read below) and then BSA chain.

When using or planning to use backstabbing skills, really try to end behind mob/player's back, to get the most out of such skills. For example, you can't ambush mob/player if they stand with their back too close to an object like wall, tree etc. In such case move them and only then use ambush if needed.

Not all jump skills will land you behind mob, ambush will, dash attack won't, you will have to move a little to get behind back after dash attack.

Sin's don't have that many skills to control mobs, you have ambush to stun, binding rune to aetherhold and blinding burst to blind, so of course you will not use these skills together, cause there is usually no need to blind target when in aether hold, wait for aether hold to end first. You get the logic- spread control skills over time. When you aetherhold mob check which way the target is facing, usually you must move to get behind it's back to use backstabbing skills. You can't try this on dummies, you need real mob.

Using some skills depends on situation, for example leap of the beast is a skill that can help you get away from mobs, but many times you don't want that. Instead you can position yourself with your back towards some obstacle or wall and then use it and after landing you will be be on the same spot and you can continue with attacks without shortening the distance to mob.

Regarding carving runes, check what level is carved by particular skill (some can carve up to lv 3 at most, some up to lv 5, some carve directly lv 5, like beast fang) and use those skills in order to get lv 5 rune. Check the color of each carved level, last one is bright red. If you have already lv 5 runes, then you won't use beast fang. You will probably detonate runes and only then use beast fang to get another lv 5 runes and detonate it again. Just use logic. Higher level runes gives you higher chance/damage when detonating runes, but you don't always need lv 5 to trigger them. Depends, train and you will see.

Also, observe how fast each skill triggers, some are much faster than others and then also combos are faster and slower and sometimes you simply won't have time to trigger whole slow combo.

Try to get some gloves and shoes from prepatch gear if you are not on new servers, it will improve attack speed/speed and help you with weaving and autoattack damage. Autoattack damage with new gear is almost irrelevant compared to prepatch gear.

Can't say much about setup, i am still a mouseclicker and not a key masher. For weaving purposes I have an autoattack icon binded to a "1" key, that means putting that icon into leftmost bottom action bar. You can see numbers in the bar and shift/control + numbers shortcuts in upper bars if u want to use keys shortcuts. As a clicker I just put icons in a way to minimize mouse movements and didn't see any advantages with keybinding, though using pots and some other stuff with keys is helpful at least in pvp, even though the fights are longer now. I rarely pvp, so ask other people.

I don't use custom chains, tried to make the combo described in my previous post on PTS, but didn't work, cause at SF the chain broke and would not go into surprise chain. Haven't tried after, but beware that no custom chain will work completely if skill to be triggered has cooldown. I never seen any useful info about sin custom chains so far. They should make keymashing easier if all skills in chain appear on same key.

I do not use special autokey software for faster triggers, ask others if interested.

About evasion and mdef read "Lost with gear" thread in this sin section. Noctis linked a video, also check similar threads in other classes sections. Tbh i have no idea what stats other classes reach, so I must believe the video .

If you are serious about playing Aion, use ARM software to record your damage and skills used, it can be really helpful. There was also aiDPS, not sure what happened with it, google it.

If you are a masochist play sin, if you want results play ranged classes, at least sieges will seem more meaningful. Without superspeed sins have hard time chasing people and good luck escaping chanters.

Oh, when you run away, don't forget that you can help yourself by using ambush on any mob you see in front and thus gain some meters.

In any case, have fun.

then you should change it as fast as possible

No such thing, its personal preference.

You know what they say- you can't teach an old horse new tricks.

I only use numlock pad for marking and function keys to target marks, that's all.

In the past I did try to play with some more number keys, but as a righthanded and shortfingered I find shift/alt/ctrl combos pretty unnatural and especially on other classes with all the lags and delays with some skills I didn't find any advantage over mouse clicking. Now after patch it's even worse. On my templar and glad during some skills and chains my screen becomes all black and everything is slow at that moment. No idea if my graphic card gets overwhelmed from skill effects or what, but i just don't see any advantage in speed while killing mobs.

I play on a system that's 8 years old, graphics like 4. Maybe when i change to new system I'll try again.

Anyway, there were a lot of threads about key setups, but I guess since GF forum was renewed in the past, many topics were deleted, but maybe you can still find something. And yes, using keys allows you to keep your eyes on the screen and see buffs and debuffs faster and react faster. You can also watch graphic patterns that accompany skills and if you can remember what means what for each class you can think and react faster ofc. As a newbie you should probably learn playing with keys. Ask Wassermelone .

was kinda joking, dont play sin, better play chanter, glad, sorc or sm. literally brain dead classes which outgear a sin by miles. most hilarious thing is the silence cover on sin. 2 whole seconds other classes have atleast 5+ seconds and 20 other covers meanwhile.

and last, dont even think about doing pvp without a gold transformation (which is still garbage on ancient pvp weapons), you get 1.2 attackspeed and with legendary 0.8. makes sense, right?


in other news, ncsoft balancing team sucks.

Gokuss, if you made it to lv 80 in 3 days, I suggest you try other classes before you commit yourself to sin. I am pretty sure you will chose another class. Sins were appreciated in the past when they stunlocked opponents and killed them. And you must know that around 30-55% (depending on how good people were with weaving) of all damage from sins came from autoattacks, which are now much lower and with only new yellow gear practically nonexistent. While some other skills do way more damage, those fast bursts of damage are in my opinion harder to achieve than in the past.

Compared to other classes sins need still target, you probably noticed that when your target moves even just 1 m, your attack stops and you must move forward. Ranged classes mostly don't have such problems, unless you get out of their range. They have a lot of time to trigger skill on you before you move out of their range of 20-25 m. And besides jumps and slow massacre you have only 1 stigma skill rune knife that hits from distance. Bards and rangers and gunners have an easy time to kill you multiple times before you get closer and burst them. In a crowd you pretty much don't stand a chance now. You will quickly see 10 debuffs on you, you will be immobilised, stunned, frozen, rooted, silenced, feared, smashed and practically taken apart in 2 secs or even less and if you manage to use all your defences and jump ahead, you still don't move far enough to not be slowed or rooted or immobilised by their next skill. Sometimes you can just watch death coming for you (or sm pet to finish you off ). It's a hard life for sin. Those who play sins now are mostly people who played for many years and raised sins as their mains and didn't bother with other classes and then they just stick to their main.

The main problem I see with sins with all the patches and updates is that game and instances evolve in a way that prefers ranged classes which means less stress for healers and there were times when it was really hard to enter some instances with sin. Take GoK for example- you can't use ambush on Piton, because of it's location (he is easy to kill now, but that's not the point...). I am pretty sure game designers do not think about such "details" when putting bosses on particular locations. And there were many "details" like this over the years that just made sin's life harder.