Differing Skill rates...is there a reason?

[Hayward]

Various foods aside, this is still nagging as an issue for mages who want to cap out non-offensive magic skills or melee who want to work on defensive skills. No matter what, it seems that skills like Enhancing Magic (essential to Red Mages' survival), Healing Magic (which will mean something soon, if Camate's words are good), Guarding, Parrying, etc. continue to move at a glacial pace.

The question I have is whether there's a reason for the slow rate of skill increase in these particular skills while others increase at a very reasonable clip. I'd also like to know if there are any plans to address the issue.

[Gennadi]

ummm maybe umm its about ummm balance? ummm

[Soranika]

Rate of usage and level of the enemy you're facing affects combat skills and offensive magic. As for magic like enhancing and healing, generally comes down to rate of usage and possibly some other factors I really don't know... mostly luck I guess.

Combat skill example
If you're always actively engaged in combat, of course whatever weapon your using will get capped because you're swing more anything else. If you're solo, evasion is always going up, if you're in a party and not holding hate as much then naturally your evasion skill goes up slow. But generally speaking your hitting and evading more hits than guarding and parrying. These start to stagnate as you level and progress to stronger enemies. In order to skill up effectively, you have to skill up on monsters at around 1/3 of your natural level. You won't skill much, if at all, if you're jumping fighting a level 80 monster with only 120 to say parrying.

Offensive magic works the same way too, only you can imagine that you'll never cast more spells than any melee swinging a weapon.

[Monchat]

enhancing: protect v spamming on besieged generals works well until the level 80 cap, and with the mana drinks, MP potions, convert, you wont run out of MP. You very often get +0.5 and +0.4s.

Healing: find your favorite level 80+ undead, and cure spam it lol.
Guard and parry: train mandys in altepa, but those skills being useless, I never bothered.

[Tagrineth]

I mained WHM at level 85 for a good 3-4 months for several hours a night in abyssea spamming Cure V on people and healing magic is still so far off cap it's really depressing.

[Dfoley]

Technically, guard and parry have the same skill rate as any other defensive skill its just the fire off so sparecly that it takes longer to skill.

EG every time you are hit, you have a chance to evade. Since evade is one of the first checks, you will skill up evasion more quickly then guard. Guard is one of the last possible checks and has a low fire rate (5%) so you will guard way less then you evade, thus fewer chances to skill up in the same period of time.


That beign said>
WHERE ARE THE INCREASED SKILL RATES FOR GUARD AND PARRY?
These were promised a long time ago and still arent even on test server.

[Fencer]

I'm not sure if this is relative the the original post, but I think Guard and Parry skill gain rate is fine how it is. I believe this because only those who are dedicated to their job will take the time to skill up.

[Neisan_Quetz]

I'm not sure if this is relative the the original post, but I think Guard and Parry skill gain rate is fine how it is. I believe this because only those who are dedicated to wasting their time because they have nothing else to do will take the time to skill up.

Fixed that for you.

[Shadotter]

As far as enhancing and healing magic, you can actually raise them at a faster rate by casting on your adventuring fellow if you've raised their level high enough, as they apparently count as a monster when it comes to skillup rates.

[CapriciousOne]

Various foods aside, this is still nagging as an issue for mages who want to cap out non-offensive magic skills or melee who want to work on defensive skills. No matter what, it seems that skills like Enhancing Magic (essential to Red Mages' survival), Healing Magic (which will mean something soon, if Camate's words are good), Guarding, Parrying, etc. continue to move at a glacial pace.

The question I have is whether there's a reason for the slow rate of skill increase in these particular skills while others increase at a very reasonable clip. I'd also like to know if there are any plans to address the issue.

Well first of all one must understand that yes their is a hiearchy in reference to some skills. For instance EVASION > SHIELD > GUARDING > PARRYING.

Obviously evasion completely avoids all damage so is favored over the others. Shield comes next and is favored over the other for the simple fact that you are putting an object between u and the mob where the object absorbs most of the damage taken but you will still sustain some damage. Sheild obviously is also better skilled up while only holding one weapon and using a shield. Guard and Parry seems more situational with guard seeming to take more effect when a person is utilizing the H2H weaponry and parrying seems more likely to skill up with those who use dual wield more often.

Another factor one must factor in is that the level of our skill is a separate entity from our actually job level. It is possible to be a level 95 Drk and yet only have the Scythe proficiency of a capped level 70 DRK. With that said when skilling it is probably best to skilling based on your skill level and not your actual job level using the Skill chart you see on the wiki. in general you want mobs that are closer to your skill level (-7 to like +3) than your job level because simply put if you cant land the move you wont really skill up that often. Though yes even with that tidbit of information skills are still horrible for defensive skills and some magic skills. Anyway you cut it though the level of your intended target in comparison to your actual skill level is a bigger factor than actual job level.
Just like you wouldnt go trying to kill a level 80 mob at level 40 and expect to be successful how could one expect to skill up at a decent rate against a level 80 mob with a skill at around level 60?

[Greatguardian]

Blame low activation rates. Your weapon doesn't need to "proc" in order to skill up. It just needs to hit. Taking a hit that you don't shield block isn't going to affect your shield skill at all. The same is true for Parry, which will almost universally sit at a 5% activation rate anyways - essentially taking 20x longer to cap than an offensive skill.

The best way to overcome this is by increasing the number of potential procs you can have by gathering up as many mobs as possible. As long as I kept Phalanx up, I was able to watch TV with 20 mandies whacking on my Paladin in Abyssea-Altepa just fine and got plenty of shield/parry skillups.