skill ups rare?

[j00manji]

I dont know if im the only one having this problem.
Currently lv.37 DRK/WAR
I knew i would need to use both Scythe and Great Sword, so from about lv.15 or so I have been trying to keep my great sword and scythe on par. I have yet to have either cap in the same level. Normally I use one half way thru the level, and the switch, but as of yesterday they were about 5 levels away from each cap as I leveled. I finnaly put down the GS for a few levels to focus on scythe, which is only at 110. GS currently 96 or so. I'm finding skill ups to be less common with each level >.< just a little bit ago i switch from scythe once it got 110 (but still not caped at 37, and im almost 38)
I was wondering if this is a common problem at this level, or what I could do to fix it. Thanks to all who help.

[CarbonFibre]

A dark knight will have a harder time skilling up because both Scythe and Great Sword are high delay weapons, so you hit many less times in a fight than someone using something like a dagger.

[Kosy]

First off, if you're skilling up with other people, then you should invest in low dmg, low delay weapons. I find the most skill pts come from monsters that tend to live longer (much longer) than when you have 10 people beat up on it with million-gil weapons.

Secondly, you need to skill up at the current level of the weapon skill. That means to fight the appropriate monsters. How many times have I've seen people who try to take a level 80 skill anything to an AF coffer hunt? You realize you'll miss tons and any damage you do is from your base+bonus stats, not because you actually did it with your weapon skill (so of course you won't get skill pts with that, capiche?)

There's numerous resources, some of them which Starving Artist produced or submitted on these forums. They might be stickied, but use the search function and hopefully you'll get the most out of your skill up

BTW ... Vorpal Blade ownz your entire family X_x

[little ninja]

at 33 it became hard for me to skill both scythe an g.sword. so i quit one an lvled scythe only, when it capped id switch to gsword till i lvled, then switched back. after a time. i went mainly scythe, an left great sword to skill up parties, a coffer hunts. where it went back to being capped. after 60 you will find it easy to skill both of them, due to needing more exp.

one thing i did notice when i was a drk. there was another drk in my pt. we wore the same gear. same race, same food. only difference is i wore 2 sniper rings, an he wore 2 deft rings. we had both lvled at about the same time. i a fight before him. well it wasnt long before he was using the new ws, while i wasnt skilling up at all. i know i hit more then he did, an our damage was almost exact. still confusing me til this day...

[Macht]

Sounds like it's time for you to find a skill up party, and get a Great Sword and Scythe with the lowest possible Delay you can find. Your weapon skill should go up very quickly with a low delay weapon, that's why H2H or dual wielded weapons (Curtousy of /NIN or NIN/) can max out to their cap so fast.

Great Sword, Great Axe, Scythe, Spear, and Great Katana don't get that same ability. Best you can do to skill up is find a very low delay weapon of what you are skilling up (Great Sword = Federation Sword, Scythe = Any Zaghnal +1), get haste + gear (at 37 it seems you only have the Wyvern stuff so you'll need to /DRG then for that or ignore it), finally find a mage with haste to cast on you. Unfortunatly those two weapons don't have any multihit Weaponskills are your current level, and since you are not at 50 you don't have Double Attack with /WAR either so that makes it even tougher.

Anyway you get the point I'm sure, and like Kosy said you fight monster in accordance to your weapons level not your level.

Originally posted by little ninja
at 33 it became hard for me to skill both scythe an g.sword. so i quit one an lvled scythe only, when it capped id switch to gsword till i lvled, then switched back. after a time. i went mainly scythe, an left great sword to skill up parties, a coffer hunts. where it went back to being capped. after 60 you will find it easy to skill both of them, due to needing more exp.

one thing i did notice when i was a drk. there was another drk in my pt. we wore the same gear. same race, same food. only difference is i wore 2 sniper rings, an he wore 2 deft rings. we had both lvled at about the same time. i a fight before him. well it wasnt long before he was using the new ws, while i wasnt skilling up at all. i know i hit more then he did, an our damage was almost exact. still confusing me til this day...

That's the other thing I forgot to mention. When skilling up try not to use any accuracy + items. They mess with your skilling up just like boosting synthesis skill, after a point the synthesis skill actually hinders your crafts skill up then help them when you skill an item that's suppose to hit a certain max.

If you remove all accuracy + you'll have a hell of a time hitting but when you do connect you're going to get skill points faster.

[Kosy]

Originally posted by little ninja
i know i hit more then he did, an our damage was almost exact. still confusing me til this day...

It's a mix of random chance and technical stuff. In his case, he lucked out, rolled 777 on the slot machine. But then again, he's gonna have a pain in the arse time w/o enough ACC when he gets Cross Reaper and Spinning Slash. Your BLM will thank you for the TP gainage my friend.

[Macht]

It's the accuracy, one of the biggest things to the skill up is hitting the target. If you buff your accuracy in any way then the bonus you get for skilling up is reduced. You'll notice this immediatly. After leveling I remove all rng. acc. gear my first actual connected shot has always given me 0.5 skill up. This is the same equivalent if you craft an item that caps 10+ levels higher then your current craft level.

EDIT:

To clarify on this I mean when I do have all rng. acc. equipped the max skill up I get .3 if I'm lucky but is frequently 0.1.

[little ninja]

so let me get this straight i failed to skill because i had an extra 10 acc on mobs conning IT - IT+. this doesnt seem right to me. who am i kidding this makes absolutely no sence to me. i mean youd figure. the more swings id throw+ the more swings i landed = more skill up chances. an i dont see how you can relate this to a craft. because we dont get skill points for missing a target. in crafting you get skills on failures as well as secess's.

seriously its just another thing i found to totally baffle me...:confused:

[j00manji]

hmmm... well, tonight i hit 41. At 40 Scythe was lv.122 (only 1 level away from teh cap) so currently scythe isnt too far off. Im wearing a sniper and a venerer ring atm. But from what it sounds like, I should use my +2 DEXrings or no +acc /dex items at all when trying to skill up. Great sword is lv.98, where should I take that?

[little ninja]

Originally posted by j00manji
hmmm... well, tonight i hit 41. At 40 Scythe was lv.122 (only 1 level away from teh cap) so currently scythe isnt too far off. Im wearing a sniper and a venerer ring atm. But from what it sounds like, I should use my +2 DEXrings or no +acc /dex items at all when trying to skill up. Great sword is lv.98, where should I take that?

like i said earlier, what weapon would you want to be your main. then thats the one you should keep capped. the other one you can always pick up later an skill it up on your own an on coffer mobs. when you get into the mid 60"s parties tend to want you to have both scythe, an great sword capped, cause you can do 2 different skill chains. thats when it becomes important to have them capped,

[RPGTyrant]

I dont know if it was just me, but I never found it a problemt o keep both GSD and Scythe lvled as I went up. I had this notion of only using gsd in my head all the way up to lvl25 drk, and I began to use scythe with 0 skill at that level, and kept both pretty much capped. If one lagged a bit behind, I caught it up in the next level. Never let your gsd go behind, and I wouldnt listen to this guy talking about picking a main weapon.

You are the party melee, make a skillchain for whatever weapon your using and the party should have no problem. The only problem i forsee is if one skill is way way way far behind the other, and that would be your own fault. In that case you wouldnt be able to lvl that skill in an exp pt.

so yeah, just work both in parties, as long as theyre within 20 lvls of cap range you should be fine doing both in a party.

[Macht]

Originally posted by little ninja
so let me get this straight i failed to skill because i had an extra 10 acc on mobs conning IT - IT+. this doesnt seem right to me. who am i kidding this makes absolutely no sence to me. i mean youd figure. the more swings id throw+ the more swings i landed = more skill up chances. an i dont see how you can relate this to a craft. because we dont get skill points for missing a target. in crafting you get skills on failures as well as secess's.

seriously its just another thing i found to totally baffle me...:confused:

Actually I've gotten skill ups when my attacks been parried, gaurded, or shielded. It's when it's completly evaded I get no skill ups from it.

I compair it a lot to crafting because it does follow very many of the same likenesses, just like everything else in this game. You won't skill up on a monster that's to high a level because it's similar to trying to craft an item that's beyond your skill level. The only difference is that even if your are attempting to skill up on something way beyond your skill level, you are still free to fight it and possibly even hit it with the right equipment.

In crafts though if you attempt to craft something well beyond your skill level it refuses to allow you to make the item. Or in this likeness you can't effectively skill up on them.

[Kosy]

When I got to 66, my greatsword shot up 2 whole pts. in about 600 exp in and got to 225. Previously, the level before, I had a very, very difficult time getting even a single skill pt.

I'm pretty sure this game is really random. However, you can increase your success for skillup by having everything you can (+acc, +DEX, etc.)

[little ninja]

Originally posted by RPGTyrant
I dont know if it was just me, but I never found it a problemt o keep both GSD and Scythe lvled as I went up. I had this notion of only using gsd in my head all the way up to lvl25 drk, and I began to use scythe with 0 skill at that level, and kept both pretty much capped. If one lagged a bit behind, I caught it up in the next level. Never let your gsd go behind, and I wouldnt listen to this guy talking about picking a main weapon.

You are the party melee, make a skillchain for whatever weapon your using and the party should have no problem. The only problem i forsee is if one skill is way way way far behind the other, and that would be your own fault. In that case you wouldnt be able to lvl that skill in an exp pt.

so yeah, just work both in parties, as long as theyre within 20 lvls of cap range you should be fine doing both in a party.

1. 95% of the communties DD dont know what ws chains with what weapon skill. so before you can lvl both best be advised to learn the SC chart. nothing like DD standing around scrathcing there head on what ws they can use...

2. if your finding a hard time keeping both them capped. an depending how far behind they are. it is best to go to one main weapon. there is no point waiting longer for the better drk WS's.

if you can keep both within 5 lvls of cap. then your doing fine. keep doing both cause later lvls they should cap out due to more exp needed. but like i advised earlier. make sure your know what chains you can do.

[Kosy]

Originally posted by little ninja
1. 95% of the communties DD dont know what ws chains with what weapon skill. so before you can lvl both best be advised to learn the SC chart. nothing like DD standing around scrathcing there head on what ws they can use...

I so agree with little ninja on this one point here (thank you for bringing it up!) It's what a lot of melee miss out. Why do DRK/THF have difficult time getting into PTs at 66? Because, they absolutely refuse to chain with any thing other than their vaunted Spinning Slash. It's time you blow off the dust off your scythe my friends and start looking at the bigger picture. Even a SAM can outdamage you if all they did was spam Tachi: Kagero

So, you need to be very flexible to get invites. In comments, I can offer 3 weapons (1hd sword but I won't dare sub NIN yet until I get it leveled up, Scythe and Great Sword. Working on 2hd Axe and 1hd Axe) and 2 subjobs (working on NIN ... ) When you become very flexible, you'll be able to be inserted into the most weirdest grouping and still do a decent 4k exp/hr, which is what you would get even with optimal party setup if half the PT were retarded :dead: )