Skilling Up Techniques - Non-weapon/Non-spell

when i hit 75 nin a year ago, my parry was at 190, a year later and probably 1.6 million exp later in merit parties not including the buffer parties i had my parry is at 225. i get more parry skill ups fighting af nm's or mission nm's than i do on exp mobs.

i was fairly close to evanos, and i dont think he had capped parry, it was close maybe 240 or 250, but im sure it wasnt capped.
 
Ruffyreborn said:
lol thats a really good idea, but will that work for parrying and shield, since the mob youre fighting (I think) has to be the one hitting you?
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For shield the mob only needs to be in front of you, for parry you have to be engaged so your weapon is out, I don't know about guarding though.
 
Taurothar said:
For shield the mob only needs to be in front of you, for parry you have to be engaged so your weapon is out, I don't know about guarding though.
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engaged, you cant block with a weapon that you arent engaged with.
 
Right. And as you can see in my SS, my weapon is out and I'm engaged. You can't get guard skillups without a weapon drawn either, but I still skilled off the mandies because they were hitting me in the front with my weapon drawn. I don't see why shield/parry wouldn't work the same way.
 
still missing boxer's mantle by the by. another +10 guard.

edit: and guard is ridiculous to try and level, especially after eva merits. lower level mobs have a hard enough time hitting you as it is. Odhinn is as close to cap as any NA on the server, i've heard stories that he would guard every other or every third hit in ballista. Last i asked, his guard was around 250, 260, give or take.

oh, and thanx Neophytal, for making me feel better about my 132 guard :bb:
 
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As RDM, you could probably do this even easier than I did as WHM/RDM. Awesome way to skillup shield, and parrying too I'd assume, if you engage a nearby sapling or leech or something. This could get you to ~180 parrying and ~170 parrying on RDM. Basically, level it on chigoes in Caedarva Mire. I like to use the camp in the tunnel on the border of I-7/I-8, which has 3 chigoes. What I do is load up on spell interruption gear, equip Genbu's Shield (for the physical damage -10%; if you don't have this, I'd go with Light Buckler), eat defensive food (tacos are nice), then head out. I buff up with Protect IV, Stoneskin, Phalanx, and Aquaveil (Aquaveil isn't necessary, but it helps if Phalanx and Stoneskin ever drop at the same time; as RDM, I doubt you'd need it, because of all the Fast Cast). Then I just aggro all 3 nearby fleas and let them whack away at me, making sure to face them. The shield skillups fly, and it's easy as can be. Even when Stoneskin falls, they mostly hit for 0 on non-crits (due to Phalanx). When I get BLU to 75, I might try this with Parrying too. :3
 
Easiest way to up your shield skill at lower levels for red mage, say around 30s and up, take yourself to Castle Oztrahoja or w/e with the yagudo votaries, dia one and just let em wail on you back at the entrance.. zone if necessary, heal yourself then do it again. Also good chance you could find that NM yag by the entrance to the castle in Meriphitaud Mountains that drops necklace good for soloing (hp and vitality bonus). I didn't read what lvl you were but stick to mobs that hit fast rather than hard.
 
eiteen said:
when i hit 75 nin a year ago, my parry was at 190, a year later and probably 1.6 million exp later in merit parties not including the buffer parties i had my parry is at 225. i get more parry skill ups fighting af nm's or mission nm's than i do on exp mobs.

i was fairly close to evanos, and i dont think he had capped parry, it was close maybe 240 or 250, but im sure it wasnt capped.
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Edit*
nvm, had made a link to his brag thread in a restricted section of our ls forums.
 
If your skill is 10 you dont go skillup on lv70 mobs...


The trick, to all skillups, is finding mobs at the right level.
Parry is, as far as I can tell, the exception that proves the theory.
Because no matter where I go, parry skillups is bad.
War75, Nin75 and Pld72 and I'm only at 217 or something... Kinda speaks for itself.
But generally, mobs should be EM > T to your skill level, not your exp level.


Not 100% fool proof, but in my experience they give the most skillups.
And my experience when it comes to skillups is, to say the least, very extensive.
I recently got my 8th quest ws. One is Blade: Ku, but the other 7 is all on my War (Evisceration, Black Halo, Retribution, Steel Cyclone, Decimation, Savage Blade and Ground Strike, if you were wondering).
Halfway done :P
 
Rappa said:
I took Guard to lvl 50 on my lvl 41 puppetmaster by just sitting around and letting mandies in Buburimu Peninsula whack away at me for hours at a time while my automaton healed me occasionally. It was kinda funny cause I started goofing off on my lvl 17 mnk and from 17 to 18 I got guard to go from 50 to 52.
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I remember seeing you out there once. You had like 6 mandies beating on you. At 1st i was gonna run over to help, then it kinda appeared that you had it under control (I didn't know what level you were), then ya sent me a tell explaining why ya had 6 mandies beating on you lol.

My Guard skill is 117. I get skill ups from NM's (besieged is a great place), but usually I'm /nin for meripos so not much chance there.
 
Rambaldi said:
I remember seeing you out there once. You had like 6 mandies beating on you. At 1st i was gonna run over to help, then it kinda appeared that you had it under control (I didn't know what level you were), then ya sent me a tell explaining why ya had 6 mandies beating on you lol.

My Guard skill is 117. I get skill ups from NM's (besieged is a great place), but usually I'm /nin for meripos so not much chance there.
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Yeah, since monks are now all but required to sub nin anymore, guard skillups in exp parties are just about impossible to get. You can still get parrying skillups in exp parties though.
 
Best way I found to level parry/shield is to go with Genbu's Shield (if you can't get a Genbu, any size 1 shield seems to work well) and a really weak dagger and just train a couple of the L50ish MNKs in SSG into a corner where no one goes. Toss of Phalanx, and they SHOULD hit for 0s whether you block or not, which lets you skill up until you simply get bored
 
Still.. the problem with guard/parry/shield is getting the actual skill up. The problem isn't really if you can parry or guard or shield. It's if SE has the balls to give you the dumb .1 - .5 skillup.

I do think that when fighting NMs that your chances of getting skillups are greater.

On my sam i went sam/nin because of the lower eva skill and good parrying skill. I bought parry knives, torque, earring, wore af pants.. etc etc. Fought lesser colibri and went from 130 to 170 in a few weeks. (KSes galore btw...). The problem was I prayed that everytime i parried that I'd get a skillup which obviously isn't gonna happen. There's no way you can parry constantly unless your parrying skill (and armor) is as even as your evasion skill (and armor).

Skilling up guard and skilling up parry each have their own disadvantages. If you're a evasion meritted ninja... I apologize.. it's very tough. Only thing i can say is goto lvl capped Pso'Xja areas where you have at least a fighting chance to skillup parry because you'll evade too much otherwise. But you don't have to get hit to skillup parry.

On the other hand, for guard.. you HAVE TO get hit. So if you have no healer.. you have to fight mobs that you can deal with getting hit. If you're a mnk, you have to deal with counter kicking in a lot of the time. As pup you have the 'luxury' of not having counter job trait. As i've been skilling up guard.. I guard A LOT on lesser colibri.. the skills don't come. I fight them because they do the multihit Pecking Flurry which you can partially guard, and that they attack faster than most normal mobs (try casting utsu and see if you get interrupted).

In both situations.. the skillups come at odd times in XP parties for me. Like I'm war/nin with 175 parry atm (no tank jobs lvled) and when i turn hate onto myself because of a weaponskill I did.. i sometimes parry.. and even then i don't get the skillup. But i do admit sometimes the chat log goes so fast that i miss the skillup msg. I didn't even know i was at 175 parry one time until i got the skillup saying i reached 175 when i thought i was still 172 ^^;

Other things I learned.. you can parry a mob's physical attacking TP move. They just say that the mob 'missed' the attack although you parried. I've gotten a parry skillup off of a 'missed' pecking flurry attack. The 'best' job to lvl parry is with cor (if you have a healer) because their evasion is very very low (i think 206 at 75) but their parrying skill is an A.

Like fire said in his reply, chigoe are probably the best mobs to fight when you reach that 'lvl' in parry/guard/shield. if push comes to shove.. just WS the chigoe to insta-kill.

I just like when you fight some super tough mob.. and you have no shadows up and it's staring right at you... and it seems your character's adrenaline is pumping.. and you parry the NMs attack instead of taking 300 dmg off a melee hit. Adrenaline Rush 4tw!!
 
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