Guard Skill Ups.....Painful!

[The Don]

Around lvl 50, a high lvl MNK friend of mines told me that it would be a great idea to start attempting to skill up my Guard Skill. He said that I would want to have a 100 base (without AF equipped) Guard Skill to fight Maat.

I took this into consideration. So, ever so often, I join skill up parties as the tank. My Guarding is now at 90 base. Recently, I was in a skill up party as tank for about 3 hours. My guarding has in raised even .1 points. Why?!? It is FAR from capped.

Any ideas?

[Omni]

Re: Guard Skill Ups.....Painful!

skills like guard, parry and shield are just annoying skills to level up. i've tanked all my nin career and my parry is only like 169... a good 60 points below cap. i can parry 20-30 times a night on IT++ mobs and still not get a single skill up.

[dragen3]

Re: Guard Skill Ups.....Painful!

Read somewhere that skills like Parry and Guard are hard to level up because you don't get much opportunity to level them since the effect doesn't happen very often and you can only gain skill when the effect occurs a suggestion would be to try slightly weaker mobs then what your currently fighing in order to increase skill and see how well that works.

[tdh]

Re: Guard Skill Ups.....Painful!

The problem with Parry, and Guard, is that Evasion is first, and takes priority. So your Evasion can cap pretty quick, and then everything else falls into place.

There's a MNK in my LS who has tanked since Lv.15 or 20. He tanked in a stack all the way to Lv.65. The static members wanted to reorganize, so they started leveling other jobs to catch up to Lv.65. MNK was bored waiting, so he deleveled 11 levels. (Yeah, I can't believe he did it either. HP at Cape Terrigan then just die, HP, die, HP.) Now he's tanking at Lv.56 and his Guard still isn't cap'd, he's about 20 points off the cap. I thought only Lv.75 MNKs managed to skill Guard to cap to be perfectly honest with ya.

Is Guard like any other skill? Where you can't just let a Lv.10 mob beat on you for 5 days straight, or is Skill Vs. Mob level like any other skill?

[The Don]

Re: Guard Skill Ups.....Painful!

Evasion is priority. I DO agree with this, which is why my evasion is almost ALWAYS capped. But, this still doesnt explain not even getting .1 lvls within 3 hours....something is just...just wrong.

[bikkebakke]

Re: Guard Skill Ups.....Painful!

Using those stumbling sandals?

[Aeolus]

Re: Guard Skill Ups.....Painful!

Maybe your skilling on mobs for a higher skill lv. Try doing it on some weaker mobs nearer to lv90 skill. You should be able to get that of crawlers in crawlnest, the ones you fight at lv32. Try Bats and Beetles in garliage as well. Theyre sort of 95-120 skill so should skill you up. tdh I dont think you can just let the mob beat on you for 5 days because you have to be engaged as far as I can tell so youd kill the mob unless it works when your facing away not attacking but Ive had this happen to me yet.

[Balodoth]

Re: Guard Skill Ups.....Painful!

It may also be because skill level for evasion, guard, parry, and shield all work the same way as skill level for weapons. The mob may soft cap what it can give you before you hard cap what your level allows. If you are guarding on a consistent basis with no skill ups, then move to a harder mob and see if skill ups resume again. If you rarely guard or evade, then you just may not have enough chances, in which case move to an easier mob that you guard against more often.

Also, get equipment that lowers your evasion so more attacks get past that and have a chance to be guarded. If there's a huge delta between evasion and guard, you may want to boost guard a few points too.

[tdh]

Re: Guard Skill Ups.....Painful!

tdh I dont think you can just let the mob beat on you for 5 days because you have to be engaged as far as I can tell so youd kill the mob unless it works when your facing away not attacking but Ive had this happen to me yet.

I didn't think about this. I thought I'd heard of somebody Guarding & Parrying with out their weapon(s) drawn. I guess it makes sense, yet I know for certain I've had gotten Evasion Skill Ups when pulling hate from somebody I Cured. (Was walking some where, saw a loan person fighting a Mob I didn't realize was a Lv.70 NM. I dropped a Cure IV on them, then a Cure III. When it bit me, I took about 300dmg but I also got .3 Evasion Skill up.) Maybe Evasion is the only one that works like that, but it makes sense to me that Guard would work like that as long as you are facing the attacker. I'll have to ask somebody to test that and get back to you guys. (My MNK is only Lv.13, and my MNK Mule is only Lv.10. I think combined Guard skill is Lv.12. lol)

[Aeolus]

Re: Guard Skill Ups.....Painful!

It would'nt make sense you could draw your weapons and gaurd with them before the mob hit you and then put them away again after either. I think they changed this anyway when they stopped mnks countering mobs that hit them from other parties. If a mob from another party hit a lv75 mnk and he guarded it would zero theyre exp gain if they were below lv50 or so.

[LadyPeorth]

Re: Guard Skill Ups.....Painful!

A mob I find good as a level 75 MNK to skill up guard on is the Guardian Crawler. He's roughly level 50, so assuming MNK has A+ in Guard, he'll cap you at around 150. Not only a valuable source of money, but a decent one for skill ups. If you're curious as to what your cap is on a certain monster, just think about at what level the mob is and that's roughly (give or take) where you'll cap.

It is really key to try and get your guard up high. Last night during a merrit party, every guard I got shaved 100 damage off the mob's attack...defintely nothing to sneeze at.

[Last_Viper]

Re: Guard Skill Ups.....Painful!

grab you some easy mobs, level 33-35 first o see how it works

fight 3+ mobs at the same time, they must stand in front of you, fast attacking mobs woulb be the best choice

if you have eva gear, unequip it.

as 62 rdm i skilled up shield and parring (a bit) in bibiki bay on 3 too weak mobs and got good skill ups, later i went to altepa and got me 3-4 EP goblins, but idk if thats doable as mnk too

[The Don]

Re: Guard Skill Ups.....Painful!

Thanx for all the info. I will most definitely give it all a try. Oh, by the way....I managed to lvl and STILL no skill ups....

[Omni]

Re: Guard Skill Ups.....Painful!

its really haphazard.
i think your best bet would be.... -evasion as much as you can then +guard skill and +<stat> which ever stat helps inc. guard rate, if there even is such a stat.

you want to be hit as much as possible so try tanking mnk types. mandragoras, orcs, sahagin come to mind. if you are in a skill up pt, sub war, provoke and have a thf plant hate on you while you just stand tehre and take hits. you can guard while not engaged right?

[Aeolus]

Re: Guard Skill Ups.....Painful!

Still waiting on someone to get back to us on that. Id try but I cant get on the bloody game.