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 (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/11544-DRK-Adjustments-via-Manifesto?p=160449#post160449)

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.

[Camate]

Have no fear! Along with the parry skill adjustments we will also be looking into adjusting guard too!

[Rosina]

Do not get me started on guard skill ups. I got enough dents in my head from trying to skill it before aby was even out. My b/f is having issues in both I'll pass the tips on.

They need to jack up the skill ups in parry and guard, they do level wicked slow. I rather it be wicked fast like evasion, even with the newbie quicky level up cap from the abyssea edtion download guaard is stil slow.

[Rosina]

Have no fear! Along with the parry skill adjustments we will also be looking into adjusting guard too!
awesome. :) ty Devin "Camate" Casadey

lolpost 13

[Urteil]

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.



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.


The first part of my post, obviously, was pointing out how SE is almost maliciously ambiguous, and it grates the nerves of many people. Nobody knows what they meant, and still don't have an inkling as to what "adjust" means. Its silly.



I too found it odd that Guard and all the other defensive skills were not mentioned.

People who would love SE to simply say, "Yea we are going to adjust Guard too! Here's how!"

Not, "Yea we gonna do some stuffs, to some stuffs, and we don't know, eventually stuff?"
Obviously you got that, so it served a purpose, the satirical, frustrated remark that it was.



Capped Guard skill was often one of the defining things among Monks that set people apart,
Who were the passionate Monk mains, and posing bandwagon imposters.

I don't see how telling you an easy step by step process as to how to easily skill defensive skills is an issue.
There's no excuse for not having anything capped anymore.

Now anyone can do it, with the above method, and not take months, even years. Maybe a couple of days? Why don't you?




You have an empyrean H2H and don't have a single RDM or SCH friend? Nobody that you could chill with and have some of their time? You could have a monkey push an Accession Phalanx button and achieve the result I am talking about.



Maybe your just a lazy jerk, who eschews advice and the methods to greatness, and that is why you're having so much trouble.
Yea, that might be it.

[Finuve]

how about an increase to skill rates on 2handed weapons to make the total time required to skill them to cap to be roughly equivalent to a 1handed

skilling staff sucks

[Unleashhell]

People need help with Parry skill ups? Level PLD, NIN or THF >.> Guard I can understand that has been broken forever.

[Modoru]

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

http://genomeffxi.livejournal.com/18269.html Refer to this for info on guard.

That said, this was posted during the 75 days, way back when, but I still find it somewhat relevant.

[Habiki]

Parry skill gets extremly hard to lvl after you hit 320 skill or so even with the abyssea method spent a total of 4 hrs the other day skilling fighting 15 mandys at a time sam/dnc and got a total of .7 combined skill from each time I got a skill up. I'm glad they can finally find some time to address this issue with the skill up rate. To the poster above Thf and Nin are horrible choices to use to try and skill up parry with since it gos through all the same checks as guard, their Evas to high to get a decent proc rate let alone a decent skill up rate.

[Catsby]

Is parry/guard activation rate so low because you only get a check after evasion or because the activation rate is capped regardless of skill level? I remember reading somewhere that it caps at 5% before any gear/enhancements.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Even if you evade like a brick unless you're thf/dnc/(sam/cor?) your parry rate is probably floored on anything worthwhile. Seems to be checked against monster level, anything T+ parry/guard start being floored unless you make sacrifices in gear/merits for them.

[Catsby]

Right. So we shouldn't be as concerned with skilling up as much as getting devs to make the skill worth something.