That, good sir, is most excellent news. Thanks for that. Now I can stop skilling Guard on my MNK and continue to (hopefully) better results when they implement that.
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I always was partial to the idea of releasing new pieces of armor that change the way parrying and guarding work for the purpose of skilling up. For parrying, an armor piece that greatly increases the chance to parry, but at the cost of taking damage instead of negating it. For guarding, same thing, but maybe reduce no damage instead of a portion of damage that guarding does now.
1) I have played monk since 2005...and I play routinely, tanking often due to pulling hate, but obviously also tanking normally in dynamis or abyssea in farming parties and xp parties. Regardless, I use monk regularly and often.
2) In January of 2009, my guard skill was 138. That's about 34 levels per YEAR.
3) In January of 2010, my guard skill was 161. That's 23 levels in 1 year.
4) Today, my guard skill is 178. That's 17 levels in over 1 year.
I'm unsure who thinks this was improved or who thinks it now is working as intended.
It should not take 10-12 years to cap a skill.
We should not have to pull 20 mobs, get a rdm to help us and wear -evasion gear to cap a skill.
Use (the correct) skill up food in abyssea with regen atmas, sub DNC for waltzes or war and full-time defender, and don't use counterstance. No idea why you feel you need a rdm.
P.S. I got 3 levels in a day soloing the T2 avatar VNMs without food, and with counterstance up full time.
I'm sorry, but you seem to have missed the point.
I get 8-10+ skill levels on most weapons in 30 minutes pulling one mob at a time with no special atma needs in or outside of abyssea. Blm get skill ups by using their magic normally in normal LS events. Whm get skill ups doing what they normally do.
Mnks should not have to "go to abyssea", "use the correct food", "use regen atmas", "sub dnc or use defender" for a "day to get 3 whole levels."
Please stop trying to create a poor solution to what should not be a problem. Skilling up in the game should occur overtime by using the job the way it was designed to be used, not by creating a time-sink method to obtain a mediocre (at best) job skill.
This is guard....it's not as if it is a good skill in most situations that a mnk is in...it's not. But it's insane that it takes years to play mnk and still not have it 50% capped UNLESS we are willing to time-sink ourselves or use contrived tanking methods with regen atmas, skill-up food, phalanx 2, 20+ mobs, while not using basic JAs like counterstance, impetus or dodge, etc.
And just so it's not missed, my skill is 178 AFTER spending around 50 hours in various places specifically leveling it using these methods (including some time after the 2011 'fix'.)
For comparison, my skill level on staff, a weapon I have never tried to skill up and have only ever used while playing sparingly on blm, is 150, a mere difference of 28 skills.
If SE was going to do this (make guard almost useless while being unable to skill up in any reasonable way), it should have been made a job trait with a flat 15-20% proc rate, preferably on all physical attacks, not corrected for level differences, or if so, such that a level 20 or less difference leaves it unaffected.
Doing that would not break the game: most if not all +guard skill items in the game are not worth wearing to increase the native skill level, while guard skill itself when it procs does -on average- modest damage reduction. 20% x a modest damage reduction is -on average- less than many individual pieces of gear give any melee.
Of course, no one is going to do this...so fixing skill so it levels much faster in 'normal' use is preferable.