An easy way to increase shield and parry?

[Chronnos]

Hi there, I'm level 26 now and I'm having a really hard time trying to get shield and parry skills up to the cap for my level. Currently, the cap at 26 is 75 for both skills. Right now I'm sitting at a 40 skill in both.

I'm playing a Taru warrior, so I really need to keep my skills current to make me a viable tank in parties, but I'm having trouble finding a way to get these skills maxed.

Anyone have any suggestions for an easy way to work up these skills?

Edit: My linksheel keeps saying "well keep tanking in parties" and I do that, constantly. I'm main voker and puller for most of my parties, so I get max chances to raise the skill, but it isn't enough. I gain levels faster than I close the gap on max skill.

[LeFaye]

You really can't do much. They just don't raise that quickly unfortunatly. Parry will go up faster using a 2H weapon but then you have no shield. Most likely you won't cap shiled untill you can't hit the level cap.

[Hisdon]

don't worry about it, it's not just you, the abilities go up super slow, so just do what you can as a tank, asumin you are going PLD, it'll go up quicker as a PLD

[Kurgan]

My shield and parry skills level up at about half the rate of my evasion and weapon skills. Or so I've noticed. My shield/parry skills are in the mid to high 20's right now while my weapon and evasion skills are around 50.

[Stolin]

An easy way is to fight easier mobs solo. Just fight lots of them and skills will go up quicker. It worked great for me I always kept my shield and parry skills at about 70% of my weapon skills up until level 40 when beta ended.

[Klumps]

At level 26, you should be able to go find an easy prey land worm in korroloka tunnel (minimum level of 21). Attack it, and turn off attack and just let it beat on you. I'm not sure if this will work, but I know for a fact you can shield block something when not engaged in melee, so it stands to reason you can gain skill as well.

When you get tired of playing with the wormy, just back out of its casting range and rest up. Personally, though, I think time is better spent leveling and raising skill than not leveling and raising skill. A level 40 paladin with parry/shield skills at 50% of their cap is still far more effective overall than a level 25 paladin with skills at 80% of their cap, so to speak.

[leii]

get + parry or + shield items. that should help

[sn0wwolf]

shield/parry's a pain to lvl and i am more concern with my shield skills. I am lvl 42 with shield skills roughly around 90 -_-;
when somebody told me the cap's 42*3+3=129. So my shield's almost 70% of cap.

when u are constanly tanking tough ITs it'll go up pretty fast. Unless u will be pld after u hit 30, i think u should go with axes/2h sword/polearm

I used sword/shield as a war to 30 b4 i take on pally. But i'll have to train my polearm when i lvl from 30 or nobody will want a sword/shield war lol.

[Arnda]

Originally posted by sn0wwolf
shield/parry's a pain to lvl and i am more concern with my shield skills. I am lvl 42 with shield skills roughly around 90 -_-;
when somebody told me the cap's 42*3+3=129. So my shield's almost 70% of cap.

when u are constanly tanking tough ITs it'll go up pretty fast. Unless u will be pld after u hit 30, i think u should go with axes/2h sword/polearm

I used sword/shield as a war to 30 b4 i take on pally. But i'll have to train my polearm when i lvl from 30 or nobody will want a sword/shield war lol.

Don't be so sure. Ideally, you want all the weapons you can maintain, with of course emphasis on the axes (polearms are very good weapons too, but they're not the godlike end-all-be-all people make them out to be... until 150 that is). And if you are going to be using one-handed weapons and NOT subbing NIN (and there are plenty of reasons not to sub NIN), then you'd be a fool not to use a good shield with it. After all, there's no downside, and lest we forget, some shields offer +accuracy and +attack, which helps compensate for the weaker damage on your axe or sword.

The trick to a WAR is to be the skillchain swiss army knife. You may not charge TP faster (at first), or hit harder, or faster, or do insane combos or have insane abilities, but by golly, you've got an arsenal of weapons at your fingertips, every darn one of them good (except maybe HTH, and HTH weapons tend to have big +acc/+atk bonuses anyway, so...).

Nobody wants a sword/shield WAR? Depends on the situation. Generally, no, they won't. But if they NEED someone with a sword (or a shield), and there's no good PLD around, you'll turn a lot of heads when you swap out the greataxe for the sword/shield and save the day (or the chain).

[Kai]

The best thing to raise shield and parry skills is fight monk type monsters since they attack at least twice per twin. Orc Champion I think it was attacked me 5 times in 1 turn:spin: .

[Sinoske]

A good way at lvl 30 is fighting mandragoras, from lvl 30-33 my shield skill went up 20 lvls. Mandras attack twice and pretty fast making them perfect.

[Kinean]

^^^

Exactly what to do. While I was tanking in the jungle, I kept seeing "Kinean's shield skill rises 0.3 points." I couldn't help to keep a smile off my face hehe.