Skill up grains for 'support skills'

Ok so here is my post i made in the SMN boards:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...l=1#post365938

So why am i making a thread here? Just to try get more attention for the devs. enchacning magic is painfully slow, with summoning skill and I am having problems with bard skills. I been playing bard non stop for 3 weeks total I think and the first week inculded farming for seals, getting string 0-280 or so and farming for +2s. The next two weeks I kept doing that along with getting some extra merits in exp abyssea pts just for the sake in trying to skill up. (90 merits i think) plus prob another 40-60 in voidwatch exp (omg vw gives so much exp it is the reason i have like max gkt ws merits and a few other ws merits plus 12 str and 11 int)

so the next two weeks of non stop brd of doing ^ that plus some PW, new limbus NM and other high level events, my skill went up 30 for string of non stop spaming Threnodys after doing the casting buffs, elgy and Pining Nocturne. I would love to toss out more cure IVs and help the event progress better but no I have been spamming Threnodies non stop for two weeks to get like 30 string skill and maybe 20 singing skill? ( did not really keep track of that since all i can really quote is string since that was pretty much useless till some +3 stuff was based on string so I wanted to skill it.) I think singing went up around 80 skill over the progress of 3 weeks since that skill goes up for wind or string. I have not really tracked wind since I was capped for wind buffs when I returned so I was only worrying about string.

Point is unless it is weapons (I think parry, guard and shield could be addressee too again.. maybe evade. is stuff is too hard to skill. Back when the game was 75 and common mobs lived 2-5 mins (talking even pre new 75, ATU and such) The slow gains was fine since it was easy to pretty much cap any skill as you leveled expect gaurd, parry and shield. The new change to shield that took place between old 75 and new 75 helped that skill greatly. (I do not know how hard/easy shield is now to cap)

After ATU and even abyssea stuff dies way to fast for the old skill up system. There is no more killing a single mob for 2-5 mins for exp or 2 hours in case of HNMs. Now a single mob dies in 10 minutes or less depending what it is. Even PW is a joke now and that mob was 18+ hours when it was new (That was not a good thing ether)

Point is the skill up system is WAY out of date and based off level 75 like a lot of rules still. After quiting for a year I was hoping the game would be off from playing off level 75 rules but I guess I was wrong.

Can we have a real level 99 cap and not a fake level 99 cap that is still based on 75 rules? thanks.

Even that the skill up system is out dated, that's not an excuse to be "gimp". The only skill hard to cap is summoning magic, other than that,anything can get capped in few(2-4) sessions of 1-2hrs. I have everything but Gs, scythe and staff capped just because I don't play those jobs that have +A skills.

Brd skills are the easier one, go to sea and get 250sh(combines), then move to worms that you can sleep and spam.... Gusgen mines worms(200-300)> gustav tunne(till cap)l should be enough and fast.

I would rather they fix craft skills up before this.

Please tell me how I can cap my enhancing in just a few hours.

I am actually in the same boat as Mirage. Anyone know?

Easy way to skill smn magic, use your blood pacts, its slightly slower but its not impossible to cap it and tbh smn skill doesnt do a whole lot for smn anyways, some acc, some more mp with siphon and some buff durations but nothing thats make or break for smn. Blood pact duration reduction gear gets it down to 45 seconds and use an avatar like ramuh, shiva or diablos who has offensive pacts in both ward and rage. I actually un-merited my smn magic cause it was just a waste that I could put them in elsewhere.

brd skills are easy to lvl. I went to aby, slept mobs and amd just used none damage causing songs to skill up as they slept. They would wake, I'd sleep and repeat. If you do not have enough skill to sleep an aby mob, go for something lower but still alot higher than your skill lvl and repeat the process. Brd skills can shoot up this way and you can mostly have it done in a matter of hours, its actually one of the fastest skills to lvl once you get the hang of it. Once your skill is high enough for aby, use the elephant things in aby-ule, the slow speed in which they move + the ramps means your never in any danger even if they resist your first sleep song.

Enhancing is the real pita the devs need to do something with.

And frankly we can go from 1-99 in under 24 hrs, is it really that bad to have to spend a little time skilling...maybe you will learning something new or at least something about your job

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Originally Posted by Tennotsukai

I am actually in the same boat as Mirage. Anyone know?

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I bet Pars knows, in his infinite skillup knowledge.

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Originally Posted by Elphy

Enhancing is the real pita the devs need to do something with.

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Campaign Battle Skill Ups.

They've had a good solution for so long and have refused so hard for something that would improve the game so much. The excuses given were Too Weak.

And I say this as someone with capped Enhancing Magic at the C+ cap (capped for White Mage).

Enhancing skillup is the reason I spent time leveling up my NPC. Still a terrible solution though, as leveling up your NPC isn't exactly done in an evening.

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Originally Posted by Mirage

Enhancing skillup is the reason I spent time leveling up my NPC.

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Is that how people do it? Mine capped out pretty quickly between the buffs I was casting, and the amount of times I cast Erase and Haste. Just wish for all the effort into Enhancing people hammer out we got better rewards then we do now, because while getting up to +25 in a stat or +185 elemental resist is nice, I'd like at least more shadows on Blink and Aquaveil.

I'm the whm for the small group I play with for the last year, which means I'm on that job every time we're more than two online at the same time, but I still hadn't gotten more than about 280 enhancing skill before I started spamming my NPC for skill.

She's lv92 now, so I won't be able to cap skills for lv99, but at least I have gotten over 30 skillups now, after spamming Protect 1 on her for 3 hours. At this rate, i'll cap after another 3-5 hours or so. Of course, that does not include the time it took to level her to 92, and I still need to get her to 95 to be able to get dem bluenumbers, as lv92 is "easy prey", not "decent challenge".

If I wanted to do this the "intended" way, which is using it on PC targets, I would have gotten perhaps 5 skill in the same three hours I've spent here now. Currently, the skillup rate is 0.05% per cast on an appropriately leveled NPC, which means the skillup rate is probably around 0.01% on PCs. Working as intended, guys!

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Originally Posted by Mirage

Enhancing skillup is the reason I spent time leveling up my NPC. Still a terrible solution though, as leveling up your NPC isn't exactly done in an evening.

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spam barspells, In 24 hours you should be near cap with anything. I fell asleep capping mine.

I find barspells to be about 10% as fast as what I am doing now, so no thanks.

Maybe if I was bot-skilling, but I'm not going to do that.

Of course, leveling the NPC takes some time too, but at least there is a chance she'll be maginally useful if they choose to buff them in the future.

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Originally Posted by Mirage

I find barspells to be about 10% as fast as what I am doing now, so no thanks.

Maybe if I was bot-skilling, but I'm not going to do that.

Of course, leveling the NPC takes some time too, but at least there is a chance she'll be maginally useful if they choose to buff them in the future.

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You did ask for suggestions. Anyway, this was how I capped all my enhancing magic on multiple characters (without foods) well before others a day or two after the caps where raised on RDM or WHM/RDM. So how are you doing it 90% faster? I would assume that yours would be capped already if it's 90% faster then the spamming barspells. In my case it took under 24 hours of spamming to cap enhancing using these methods. If your method is 90% faster then yours would be capped 9 times faster then me in somewhere around 2 1/2 hours.

You said "near cap in 24 hours" not "at cap in less than 24 hours".

You also say this was before caps were raised, which means you needed a lot fewer skillups to reach the cap. We're also lacking important information such as how far from the cap you were back then when you started skilling it up.

While it is clearly eyeballing, I needed to cast a lot more spells per skillup with barspells than I had to with my current method. I do however have statistics for my current method, as i kept track of the number of cast and amount of skillups, so I can start barspells for about 100 casts to get an indication of its skillup rates.

-edit- 100 is too low a sample size, I'll triple that, for now.

After 267 casts, i got 1.5 skill. That's 0.00561% skill per barspell cast. After 1104 Protect 1 casts on my Lv92 NPC, I had gained 39 skill (didn't note down decimals, sorry), which gives me an approximate average skillup rate of 0.035% per cast.

So far, it looks like casting on my NPC is about 7 times faster. I'll gather some more data later, if you don't think this is sufficient, but it already shows a clear difference between the two.

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Originally Posted by Mirage

You said "near cap in 24 hours" not "at cap in less than 24 hours".

You also say this was before caps were raised, which means you needed a lot fewer skillups to reach the cap. We're also lacking important information such as how far from the cap you were back then when you started skilling it up.

While it is clearly eyeballing, I needed to cast a lot more spells per skillup with barspells than I had to with my current method. I do however have statistics for my current method, as i kept track of the number of cast and amount of skillups, so I can start barspells for about 100 casts to get an indication of its skillup rates.

-edit- 100 is too low a sample size, I'll triple that, for now.

After 267 casts, i got 1.5 skill. That's 0.00561% skill per barspell cast. After 1104 Protect 1 casts on my Lv92 NPC, I had gained 39 skill (didn't note down decimals, sorry), which gives me an approximate average skillup rate of 0.035% per cast.

So far, it looks like casting on my NPC is about 7 times faster. I'll gather some more data later, if you don't think this is sufficient, but it already shows a clear difference between the two.

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Near cap with anything. I did say that but my base was if starting at incredibly low skills. My second response mentioned that I capped everything right after the level increases.

Maybe I just got lucky skilling up because I capped skills a lot faster then your testing then again I capped healing afterwards spamming cure 1. Oh yea I also used a 2nd character. :P

Well, I didn't exactly cast with as low delay as theoretically possible possible, and I wasn't 100% perfect with restarting my 6-cast macro each time it finished.

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Originally Posted by Mirage

You said "near cap in 24 hours" not "at cap in less than 24 hours".

You also say this was before caps were raised, which means you needed a lot fewer skillups to reach the cap. We're also lacking important information such as how far from the cap you were back then when you started skilling it up.

While it is clearly eyeballing, I needed to cast a lot more spells per skillup with barspells than I had to with my current method. I do however have statistics for my current method, as i kept track of the number of cast and amount of skillups, so I can start barspells for about 100 casts to get an indication of its skillup rates.

-edit- 100 is too low a sample size, I'll triple that, for now.

After 267 casts, i got 1.5 skill. That's 0.00561% skill per barspell cast. After 1104 Protect 1 casts on my Lv92 NPC, I had gained 39 skill (didn't note down decimals, sorry), which gives me an approximate average skillup rate of 0.035% per cast.

So far, it looks like casting on my NPC is about 7 times faster. I'll gather some more data later, if you don't think this is sufficient, but it already shows a clear difference between the two.

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Casting spells on others raises skills faster than only casting spells on self; this was stated eons ago. However, it is usually easier for players to spam buffs on themselves because they do it solo in/out of town, not with other characters floating around doing nothing; or don't have a companion.

Casting spells on others is only faster if that other is an NPC.