Wrestling vs Resist Spells, or why bother with Wrestling?

One of my characters being worked on is Edifice, a Mystic Mage and Gargoyle. He has the following goal template:

120: Magery, Eval Int
120: Mysticism, Imbuing
120: Meditate, Wrestling

With the existence of mage weapons now, why bother with Wrestling?  Would this character not be better served with 120 Resist Spells instead?  Sure, his ability to fend off weapons attacks with a mage weapon will only be, say, 95 instead of the 120 given by Wrestling, but for the most part he'll try to keep his distance from warriors. I'd think the loss of those 25 points is more than offset by 120 points of Resist Spells.

/added
I realize now that this question belongs in the Skills and Stats forum, but there appears to be no way to delete a post. Sorry.

I would swap Imbuing for Focus and Wrestling for Spellweaving.  Wear a good MR and high SDI suit.  I would only use a mage weapon when there is significant spawn that is giving you issues, otherwise I would be holding a slayer / SDI spellbook.

First off if you have 120 eval, and just want the defensive benefit of wrestle your better off going 100 anatomy.  Focus would also be of more benefit than imbuing (altho i do have myst on my crafter myself that has imbue, just to be able to kill the random mob)

The reason people do anatomy (or wrestle) rather than a mageweapon is that you dont have to worry about being disarmed in pvp.  It can also be more difficult to get that extra 15 / 20 magery points on jewels to make up for the mageweapon.

The benefit of wrestle is the specials, disarm and paralyzing blow.  it also is the only skill that will proc bracers of alchemical destruction lightning

Pvp’ing without resist? Madness 

Thanks, guys. I have decided to forego the 64-odd points Edifice had in imbuing, and build Focus to 120. Another of my guys on this shard is a tailer/smith, and Imbuing will be more convenient on him anyway.

However, I'm still undecided on the issue of Wrestling vs Resist vs Spellweaving vs 100 Anatomy + 20 in something else. Spellweaving would become a 3rd high-end magic system to actively manage. I'm not sure I'm good enough for that complexity, considering the other alternatives are mostly passive (Wrestling offers the two special moves). Merus likely can handle the defense weaknesses using weaver spells, but I don't think I could. Still, Edifice will ba a mana-regen beast bare naked, with 12 from Meditate, 6 from Focus, and the +2 due to his Gargoyle race.

Only needing 100 Anatomy instead of 120 Wrestling is possibly beneficial if I could think of a useful place to put those 20 points. PapaSmurf would laugh at me should I place a sad 20 points in Resist, which humans have anyway. And, as Smoot pointed out, he'd lose the two specials.

I have not yet decided, but given the either-or situation, I am favoring Resist over Wrestling. It seems likely that a mage weapon and a re-arm keystroke at the ready is "high mediocre", but lacking Resist is "bad".

Rock said:

Thanks, guys. I have decided to forego the 64-odd points Edifice had in imbuing, and build Focus to 120. Another of my guys on this shard is a tailer/smith, and Imbuing will be more convenient on him anyway.

Do you have a Garg char, they get an imbuing bonus.

Bilbo, heh, Edifice is a Gargoyle, and the imbuing bonus is one reason he was building the skill. The character picking it up, Taylor Smythe, is, unfortunately, human. I realized this issue, but it was peripheral to my main question and didn't mention it.  If at some point in the future Taylor should feel sub-optimal, I've read something about "race-change tokens".  I think it was UOGuide that suggests building up Imbuing on a non-Gargoyle is quicker, because the Imbuing bonus will make skill-gain slower on Gargoyles. Ah, there it is:

Also, it should be easier to train this on a human, due to the imbuing success bonus that gargoyles get, which means that you must imbue higher intensity properties to maintain the 50% success rate. After training to 120, then use a soulstone to transfer the skill to a gargoyle character (or use a race change token).

For reference, here is Taylor's modified template goal:

120: Blacksmithy, Tailoring, Imbuing

100: Alchemy, Arms Lore, Tinkering

 60: Chivalry

(He gave up 60 in both Focus and Swords for the Imbuing.)