Adjustments to gaining Parry Skill...what about Guard?

[Paksenarrion]

First as an overall adjustment, we will be revamping the difficulty of increasing parry skill. After this, the next step will be skill adjustments for each class.

Source

Parry is a difficult skill to level, that can be agreed upon by most. Guard, as it stands, it harder. Parry can be skilled by any job that can equip a weapon OTHER than hand-to-hand. Even MNKs and PUPs can gain parry.

For Guard, you MUST be using hand-to-hand. If I recall, the only jobs that get Guard skill at all are MNK and PUP (I could be wrong! Don't quote me! D=).

Guard is, in my personal opinion, harder to skill up than Parry for that reason alone.

You must also be tanking, and have to pass through several checks before it gets to Guard, which I believe is the last check before taking damage (Again, don't quote me.).

Since you guys are looking into Parry, what about Guard?

[Tsukino_Kaji]

You can get guard pretty easy in abyssea altep, just agro tons of those mandies and have a good rdm backup with phalanx II merits. It's the fastest way I've seen.
Still more guard skill gain would be nice, but if you up that, you'll need to up shield too to be fair.

[Paksenarrion]

you'll need to up shield too to be fair.

Shield is arguably the easiest defensive one to skill up...on PLD, anyways. Though my WHM90's shield skill is pretty decent already and her PLD is only 13.

Though maybe they should just look at all four of the defensive skills. I think they should concentrate on Guard and Parry first though.

[Raxiaz]

Evasion is just fine. Parrying and guard definitely need a fix in skill up rates...

[Urteil]

Who even knows what they meant by that.

Its SE speak, and was probably translated incorrectly.

Just a useless response that nobody cares about.



As far as 'adjusting' the difficulty, its already incredibly easy to level defensive skills:

1. Go to Abyssea Altep
2. Get Regen/Defense Atma
3. Get Accession Phalanx
4. Aggro Every Mandragora in sight, pool them together in front of you using terrain.
5. Target one off in the distance out of your attack radius.
6. Profit.

[Paksenarrion]

Who even knows what they meant by that.

Its SE speak, and was probably translated incorrectly.

Just a useless response that nobody cares about.



As far as 'adjusting' the difficulty, its already incredibly easy to level defensive skills:

1. Go to Abyssea Altep
2. Get Regen/Defense Atma
3. Get Accession Phalanx
4. Aggro Every Mandragora in sight, pool them together in front of you using terrain.
5. Target one off in the distance out of your attack radius.
6. Profit.

Incorrect translation or not, something was mentioned that invoked a question about a similar skill. I see no reason for the first bit of your post. Like your opinion of SE's responses, yours was "just a useless response that nobody cares about."

And because everyone has on-demand access to a RDM/SCH or SCH/RDM. /rolleyes

Now that I've fed the troll, let's get some decent discussion here.

Evasion is just fine. Parrying and guard definitely need a fix in skill up rates...

I agree that evasion is fine as it is. I've never had a problem with capped evasion, even on my WHM alt. As I mentioned before, I feel shield doesn't need to be adjusted because the main shield using job (PLD) will have that capped fast. My WHM doesn't have too much issue with skill-ups on it either.

The main reason for my post stating that they should look at all is because someone's going to complain about evasion if I agree that they should look at shield. Parry and Guard are the true defensive skills that should have their skill-up rate adjusted, with maybe a small touch to the others, but I don't think those other two need a big overhaul.

[Seriha]

Since PLD is really the only job with an appreciable shield skill and an expectation to actually be using it, they don't actually need a pocket RDM or SCH since SE gave them Phalanx. What I did was went PLD/SCH to Mis[A], put up Light Arts for yet more enhancing skill, and just rounded up all the mandies there since I knew it was more likely Altepa and Attohwa would be occupied by cleavers and such. I'd done this shortly before the skill up foods were announced, but went from 200 to 361 in maybe 3.5 hours. If I'd tried /SCH for my first attempt, it probably would've been somewhere between 2.5-3 since without I'd still get mandies doing 1 damage and in turn had to limit myself to how many I could pull to guarantee recasts.

Sadly, Parry and Guard aren't as fortunate, since the corresponding jobs with high levels in 'em don't get Phalanx or enough enhancing skill to make it work. Even with both maxed, though, I think the activation rate is actually pretty low. If that's what they have in mind for adjusting parry, in making it trigger more (thus more skill up chances), good.

[Runespider]

I'm not a wealth of knowledge on mnk but isn't guard useless anyway? Capped or not.

[Horadrim]

You can get guard pretty easy in abyssea altep, just agro tons of those mandies and have a good rdm backup with phalanx II merits. It's the fastest way I've seen.
Still more guard skill gain would be nice, but if you up that, you'll need to up shield too to be fair.

Difference with Shield is that the job that needs it most gets it almost accidentally. The primary issue with Guard is that you can only get it on two jobs which are almost never getting hit unless they're doing something wrong or soloing.

I'm not a wealth of knowledge on mnk but isn't guard useless anyway? Capped or not.

Nickles are mostly useless except for those few times you happen to be 5 cents off from a soda in a vending machine.

That said, its better to have it capped than to not have it capped since you have it -- it may not help a ton, but the few times it happens to help -- it can pretty nice.

[Panthera]

Parrying essentially negates damage, as does evasion. Guard only mitigates it, so why is it so much harder level?

Players really shouldn't have to go to lengths such as agroing mandies and targeting a mob in the distance--which really just exploits game mechanics--in order to get skillups. Gameplay time should be stimulating and challenging. Guard skillups should be gotten naturally along the way over the course of playing.

Fix it.