Make combat and magic skill gains a little easier.

[Sarick]

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.

I donno, my WHM has been stuck at 391 uncapped fighting decent challenge 92-93 mobs for 3 days. I'm talking 80% accuracy + WS WS WS Spirit Taker. This is with MAXED merits in staff skill. I honestly think it's broken because it's not blue yet after 42 man hours fighting DC mobs it's still 291!

The fact that my NPC fellow has leveled 81 > 87 in this time proves my failure to skill up on DC mobs isn't just my imagination. perhaps I need to find DC mobs with higher evasion skill to correct the failure to skill up. My main checks 92-93 crabs as having low evasion and high defense. Still decent challenge should be giving skill ups unless it's based VS evasion skill more then mob level.

[RAIST]

the DC tweak is against the level cap of our current skill level. 291 club skill is approaching level 82 caps for WHM. If you are trying to exploit that tweak, need to be looking for lower level mobs.

As always, finding level appropriate mobs is usually the biggest "tweak" you can do.

[Zarchery]

What about Healing Magic? As WHM it's up there, but nowhere near cap. And curing is practically all I do. I haven't really bothered trying, since, does higher healing actually DO anything? I guess it boosts cure potency, but my cures seem to be doing okay and the skill is somewhere around 290.

I did recently skill up hand to hand on MNK (capped at 95 in October on Duriumshell crabs in Vunkerl Inlet and recently capped for 99 on mandragoras in Abyssea Miseareaux). Also capped axe for BST. Most of the skilling was done on fortalices until around 270, then went the rest of the way a bit on Abyssea partying but mostly, again, on the mandragoras. Used about 3 stacks of Saltenas for the whole thing.

Way I figure it, the time to cap each of these skills was about the same amount of time it would have taken to get from 70-75 in the olden days. Which I guess isn't too bad.

[Sarick]

the DC tweak is against the level cap of our current skill level. 291 club skill is approaching level 82 caps for WHM. If you are trying to exploit that tweak, need to be looking for lower level mobs.

As always, finding level appropriate mobs is usually the biggest "tweak" you can do.

I made a mistake in the type, I'm stuck at 391 not 291..

It's still stuck at 391 after getting another NPC fellow level.

[Sarick]

What about Healing Magic? As WHM it's up there, but nowhere near cap. And curing is practically all I do. I haven't really bothered trying, since, does higher healing actually DO anything? I guess it boosts cure potency, but my cures seem to be doing okay and the skill is somewhere around 290.

I did recently skill up hand to hand on MNK (capped at 95 in October on Duriumshell crabs in Vunkerl Inlet and recently capped for 99 on mandragoras in Abyssea Miseareaux). Also capped axe for BST. Most of the skilling was done on fortalices until around 270, then went the rest of the way a bit on Abyssea partying but mostly, again, on the mandragoras. Used about 3 stacks of Saltenas for the whole thing.

Way I figure it, the time to cap each of these skills was about the same amount of time it would have taken to get from 70-75 in the olden days. Which I guess isn't too bad.

THESE are the mobs I'm skilling on now with that WHM stuck at 391.

Unfortunately, I think you are overlooking the key element to skilling up.

Dedication.

I skilled up both my magics 2 separate characters in 3 days from 95 caps to 99 caps. I did this without the skillup foods or GoV benefits.

RDM > Enfeebling, Enhancing, divine, elemental, dark and healing.

WHM > Healing, Enhancing, Enfeebling and Divine.


Here's how..

Enhancing spam barspells 20 hours.
Healing spam cure 1 on yourself 20 hours.

The next 3 work best with someone else tanking.
Enfeebling spam dia 5 hours on IT mobs.
Elemental spam stone 5 hours on IT mobs.
Dark Spam bio and bio 2 on IT mobs 5 hours.
Divine, Alternate Flash and Banish or just banish every 15 seconds for 10 hours on IT mobs if the tank loses hate easy.

Add all these times together comes too 65 man hours or 2.7 days. If you dedicate a bit of time to each skill by training instead of casually using skills in parties they will cap easily in a few hours. The times I listed are well beyond the time it took for me to get each skill 95 > 99. I used the hours as a baseline reference your results may very however, if spammed these skills should cap before the hours listed.

Best advice ever "Work smarter not harder"

[RAIST]

I made a mistake in the type, I'm stuck at 391 not 291..

It's still stuck at 391 after getting another NPC fellow level.

Kinda the same principal applies. 391 club is 1 point bast 97 caps for WHM, so you are working towards level 98. A 92-93 level target at that point is leaning more towards the EP end of the spectrum (esp. if you are gearing a little for melee, subbing a job that may give any ACC/ATT bonus, etc.) . The concept is basically that your target needs to have some level of difficulty to hit it consistently for a decent amount of damage to get a decent skillup rate. Otherwise you may thwack forever to get a louzy .1 skillup.

If you are 99, might want to move to something a little closer to your level or higher if you can take them on. For example, I had no problem hitting 99 caps on the dhalmels in Aby Altep on DRG....I left shortly after capping it and I'm still about 20k from capping xp on that job. I was soloing it the last few levels to 99 and consistently recapped PA before dinging the next level. Kinda sorta doing that now on SMN too. Capped staff at 97 and got club within 6 points of cap today in just under 2 hours, still about 10k from hitting 98...thwacking nothing but crabs that were running DC to VT at 97 (mostly EM/T). It was actually skilling quite nicely with NO SKILLLUP FOOD (used the candy ring from my dream platter, 4 DEX/4AGL, only swapping to DD gears for WS, otherwise in backline gears). I got 16k into 97 from Bastion before heading to Aby Grauberg, so I got 7 points on staff and almost 8 on club within roughly 27k worth of xp solo (2280 xp per page every 5 kills, so it wasn't a whole lot of fighting). Granted, mobs that reach T/VT level may be a bit rough solo on WHM (remember doing Aby-Uly Raptors on WHM for a trial at 90...that was a lot of fun). But, you should be able to find something more along the EM lines to work with--especially if you hit abyssea mobs.

[Sarick]

Kinda the same principal applies. 391 club is 1 point bast 97 caps for WHM, so you are working towards level 98. A 92-93 level target at that point is leaning more towards the EP end of the spectrum (esp. if you are gearing a little for melee, subbing a job that may give any ACC/ATT bonus, etc.) . The concept is basically that your target needs to have some level of difficulty to hit it consistently for a decent amount of damage to get a decent skillup rate. Otherwise you may thwack forever to get a louzy .1 skillup.
.

I think I'm going to go fight the IT's again I'm tough enough to duo them as RDM/WHM + WHM/SCH straight tank as I did this farming LB items and skilling up magics as listed above. I'm going to point this out a second time, I'm talking "staff" not club. Club was capped on these same mobs a few days ago so I assumed staff would raise at the same rate. last night I did get 0.4 skill up and staff (unmodified by merits) reported a 1 point skill up to 372. Basically, it now says on the skills 392 staff instead of 391 I think I need those VT-IT's mobs again

[RAIST]

Ahhhh... now I see some of the confusion....you are reporting adjusted skill after merits/gear. WHM natural cap for staff at 99 is 378, club is 404. The numbers combined with my blondeness and I was jumping straight to what sounded more like the proper weapon type for the different numbers I was seeing (the WHM's I know worry more about clubs than staff, and it didn't dawn on me that 291 might be a typo).

So yeah...if your Natural skill on staff is at 372 on WHM, than you are in the last tier to 99 caps already (371 is 98 cap), so you will probably want at least a high-end DC or higher for any kind of decent skillup rate to happen.

[Sarick]

Ahhhh... now I see some of the confusion....you are reporting adjusted skill after merits/gear. WHM natural cap for staff at 99 is 378, club is 404. The numbers combined with my blondeness and I was jumping straight to what sounded more like the proper weapon type for the different numbers I was seeing (the WHM's I know worry more about clubs than staff, and it didn't dawn on me that 291 might be a typo).

So yeah...if your Natural skill on staff is at 372 on WHM, than you are in the last tier to 99 caps already (371 is 98 cap), so you will probably want at least a high-end DC or higher for any kind of decent skillup rate to happen.

I capped it on the VT and IT mobs in under 2 hours. The higher level mobs (102-105) raised it fast.

[Zarchery]

THESE are the mobs I'm skilling on now with that WHM stuck at 391.
The next 3 work best with someone else tanking.
Enfeebling spam dia 5 hours on IT mobs.
Elemental spam stone 5 hours on IT mobs.
Dark Spam bio and bio 2 on IT mobs 5 hours.
Divine, Alternate Flash and Banish or just banish every 15 seconds for 10 hours on IT mobs if the tank loses hate easy.

Well I did do many hours of dedicated training about a year ago to cap Dark, Enfeebling, Divine, and Elemental magic for WHM and BLM, to level 90. Did that by spamming spells on worms in Abyssea Uleguerand for a while. Maybe took 20 hours total for all of them. When they raised the cap to 95 then later to 99, I just didn't have the patience for it (I tend to look at a lot of things in this game in a frame of mind of "is it fun and if not is it worth the effort?). I capped Elemental Magic for 95 quite by accident when I was nuking mobs to do Darkness staff magian trials. It's still not capped for 99 though, and the other skills are all somewhere slightly above the cap for 90 I guess.

But the part where you suggested spamming spells on IT mobs is troubling. You said you'd need a tank, but that's someone to stand around and hold hate for hours upon hours while I spam spells. I have some very helpful friends who would drop everything to help me some times, but even they have limits.

Still, I might mosey on up to Uleguerand again and try those worms once more. I managed to cap H2H for MNK and Axe for BST up to level 99 in a not terribly long time (maybe 6-8 hours). Though those jobs had the luxury of being able to skill against mobs that could fight back. WHM and BLM are a lot squishier.