Make combat and magic skill gains a little easier.

thats why i included the (even if it under limited time for each day)

hell it could be 1 hr for each Earth day and each strike will only give you .01 for skill

the reason i ask is because the way it is right now if your not 95 you can not get a party unless you go to aby or book burn (which you can only skill up to the max of the level of your lvlsync)

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Originally Posted by Zarchery

Maybe I'm just beating my head against a wall on these fortalices. By now they're only lasting about 20 minutes when I'm wearing nothing but a Butterfly Axe, and getting maybe 1.5 points of skill each.

Come to think of it, I had H2H capped for 90 on MNK. After the level cap was raised I got to 95 fairly quickly and my H2H was still lagging behind. Managed to close the gap reasonably quickly by going MNK/DNC and just pounding on Duriumshell crabs in regular Vunkerl for a while.

Yesterday I went from 77 to 78 on Bluffalos in Uleguerand. Didn't even do the Dominion Op just so that XP would slow a little. Still, in the whole experience, only got 2 levels of great axe. It bothers me that it's just about impossible to keep combat and magic skills even with XP level growth, whereas it used to be pretty much guaranteed.

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Ok you are missing something, most ppl in this thread are missing it. Skill up rates are determined by your current skill level vs the level of the monster. What it means is that if your skill is 200 and your fighting a level 98 monster, your skill is too low and you won't get many skill ups proced. Best thing to do is figure out what level your skill is at, not the raw number but what job level that would be capped at, then fight monsters 2~5 levels above that level. Using this method you'll skillup must faster then using level 70 skill vs a level 100+ monster (Buffalo).

Skills need to be increased.... I think they should start at 0.1 then slowly increase by the hour skilling to 0.5. After say 5-10mins with out combating will reset the time.
Hour 1: 0.1 > 0.2 at about 20-30 swings / casts.
Hour 2: 0.2 > 0.3 at about 15-20 swings / casts.
Hour 3: 0.4 > 0.5 every 10-15 swings/casts.
Hour 4+: 0.5 every 7 swings / casts.

Something like this .... We really need a Little bit faster rate on skilling... I spent 7+ hours on Great Axe tonight to test some things and was only able to snag like 5-7 skill ups.... at that rate ill be cap around this time next year give or take.

Yesterday I made 25 SkillUps (Blue Magic and around 30 Sword) as a BLU just by spaming some spells. As RDM or BLM I could easily double it.
Today as a BST I gained 40 with axes within 3h.

So the rate is fine. You just have to find a good mob.

2 handed weapons really are the only things I find a chore to skill. /SAM makes it go faster but, usually if you are skilling it's alone, meaning you are most likely /DNC, so lose out on that benefit. Even then, it's not 'horrible' I think. Yeah it's a bit zombifying to just be skilling all day, but I definitely see progress every time I go out to skill. Hell I took my shield from like 123 to 99 cap in less than 3 days. 320-ish -> cap in about an hour session as well in abyssea altepa haha.

Oh, guard is a whole different can of worms (parry too, but I have come to feel parry is just something you work on over the course of your FFXI career), but that's been touched upon in other threads already.

There is wa way to skill 2h-weapons faster, but the day you get the weapon done, your skill should be cap.
2-4 times weapons from Trial of the magians or regular multihit weapons like the sea version or NM drops (Soboro) or the Mercurical weapons.

But it's still pain in the ass...

Two suggestions.

#1 Why not allow merits to be converted to skill ups? This is one way to use that FAST experience towards skill and balance things out. This is provided the main job has at least E skill. With the option to earn 1-3 skill ups per merit depending on current job skill rank. My guess is this wouldn't be game breaking.

#2 Skills like Parry and Guard should be more like evasion. Failures count towards skill up experience provided you're facing the enemy and engaged. Of all the skills only these two are broken without the use of tricks and long training.

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Originally Posted by Zarchery

I'm trying to do great axe from 200 to 280 on fortalices and getting about 3-6 points per hour, and that's with Elchenas. Either I'm doing something wrong or it's the game.

I'm open for suggestions really, if there's a decent way to do this.

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Elshena is the wrong food for this tier--use Montagna.

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Originally Posted by Rosalie

Elshena is the wrong food for this tier--use Montagna.

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Think Elshina still appears to work at the higher tiers--at least it still seemed to apply with the oddballs I had leftover when I got on SMN to work on staff from 90 to 95 caps. While food was in effect it certainly seemed like I hit each point at a faster rate--only to have it slow down when it wore off and pick up again after taking another. I'm not the first to experience this either.

These are likely just different strength effects within the formula that affects the % chance to get a skillup and/or the quality of the skillup, not something designed to only affect your skillup rates within specific tiers of skill. Granted...the wiki is stating Montagna is for 300+ range specifically....but the other foods don't say that, and there is no source given to back up that claim either. It's kinda hard to nail it down because your skill is a constantly changing variable against a variably changing target, and under variable conditions that may affect it (in/out of abyssea, fluctuation in cruor buffs due to resistance activity, martial mastery applying or not, your own stats changing because you leveled up...). You can't necessarily reset your specific weapon to 250 skill and always duplicate the additional factors to try it again with the same target/conditions with a different food. Without specific controls for testing like that, short of a direct statement from SE it is all kind of open to speculation. But so far, it would seem that all of them MAY have an effect on the skillup progress, just to varying degrees of influence.

Elshena dose work to cap, but it's for defencive skills only. I just used it to get shield from 220 to cap today.