Skill cap adjustments, when?

[Dfoley]

I dont think they have done anything to parry or guard. I just went out in full + guard gear (300 with all the gear and merits and natural skill)

took roaring laughter - ducal guard - 20 regen atma
went to altepa
pulled 10+ mandy
had protect/phalanx II/full set of -pdt gear
skill up ring (no earring) and skill up food

in 120 minutes of non stop 10 mandies beating on me i got 3 skill ups (as 3.0)

Tried the same in attohwa, same result 2.4 skill ups in 2 hours.


None of that seems to fun/balances/worth while. At that rate it will take me 120 + hours to cap guard, doing the above capped evasion, shield, and 6 weapon skills in 120 minutes TOTAL. As in a single 120min stint was enough to cap all of that. Its not about time sinks when you can skill up everything else 1000x faster

[RAIST]

your guard skill may have been too high to get the big skillups. I just used basically defense/regen/refresh/regain atmas and the cruor buffs. Think it was a mix Stronghold, Vicissitude, VV, and Minikin, depedning on the job. Basically, aside from merits and a few odd pieces of gear (like feral mask and MNK AF legs, or fortified chain, etc) the skills were more or less their natural levels.

Edit: 0.o just pulled up Laughter...couldn't remember it's stats: estimated at +12% Counter rate. Also, getting a big evasion bump from Ducal too (+30?). So, kinda had some strikes against you.

[Dfoley]

Edit: 0.o just pulled up Laughter...couldn't remember it's stats: estimated at +12% Counter rate. Also, getting a big evasion bump from Ducal too (+30?). So, kinda had some strikes against you.

May want to go check those atma again sparky.

Ducal guard: Guard dmg taken down (major), -50%pdt when less then 50% hp, - movement speed

No evasion at all on ducal guard, not sure where you are getting 30.

Roaring laughter is - evasion (roughly -30)

That + agressor = no issue with getting hit 60% + of the time.

[RAIST]

eh.. probly thinking of C&D...usually pair that with DG on MNK.

The +12% to counter though is an issue---roughly 1/8 or 1/9 hits is countered BEFORE guard gets rolled on it, so you are reducing your chances for quard to process.

And when you say full guard set, is that full as in +67 skill, or a cheaper/easier set in the +30-40 range? The point there is just what is your native skill. Those mobs start their spawns around the 80-85 mark if I remember right (unless there is some serious slaughtering going on).

[Dfoley]

Native is 240ish , and full as in +60ish skill cause I was at 298 with everything.

12% counter doesnt mean much when you pair aggressor with the -evasion on roaring laughter. Without roaring laughter i evade more than 12% more often, so the net potential for guard is actually higher. Because if you evade 80% of the hits, vs 40% its considerably more chances.

Not to mention, in altepa, they con decent con which is enough to cap you at 95...

[RAIST]

it is still a reduction in proc rate though. 88/100 chances to roll vs 100/100 on hits that fail Counter check. By removing that atma and going with something else, you could increase your chances for skillup but a little over 13% from the previous setup (reclaiming 12 more rolls over 88 in theory, that's about 13.5% more).

Choosing the level of your targets are screwy now with those tweaks they made a while back. I sometimes found I had better luck going after mobs that are close to or just below my skill level vs. the harder mobs. I was popping 290-300 level in sky on some jobs doing trials. Sounds like you are running with a native skill in the upper 60's, ramping up to about 80-ish level with gear/merits, fighting mobs in the 85+ range. IDK.. might be worth it to try some lower level mobs. Maybe Vision zone?

[Byrth]

Well, I'm going off this. At the moment, you have about a 4% chance of skilling up per Parry and you're going to average about 0.3 skill per parry. It used to be about a 2% chance of skillup.

[Dfoley]

it is still a reduction in proc rate though. 88/100 chances to roll vs 100/100 on hits that fail Counter check. By removing that atma and going with something else, you could increase your chances for skillup but a little over 13% from the previous setup (reclaiming 12 more rolls over 88 in theory, that's about 13.5% more).

Choosing the level of your targets are screwy now with those tweaks they made a while back. I sometimes found I had better luck going after mobs that are close to or just below my skill level vs. the harder mobs. I was popping 290-300 level in sky on some jobs doing trials. Sounds like you are running with a native skill in the upper 60's, ramping up to about 80-ish level with gear/merits, fighting mobs in the 85+ range. IDK.. might be worth it to try some lower level mobs. Maybe Vision zone?

You really arent getting the math dude...

Without roaring laughter:
~80% evasion 20% of hit make it past evasion of which 15% will naturally be counter (.85*20/100=17/100 hits to possibly guard)

with roaring laughter:
60% evasion 40% of hits make it past evasion of which 27% will be counter (.73*40/100 = 29/100 hits to possibly guard)

Even with the increased counter, the decrease in evasion actually adds way more hits of which can be guarded....


Yes if, there was an -EVA atma that didnt have counter it would be a better option. However, none exist to my or wikis knowledge. Agressor + Roaring laughter is the best way to lower your evasion as far as possible.

And as for the bold part, i tried attohwa. I cannot easily try a vision zone since the mandy dont link/agro and it would kill my healer.



All of this is irrelevant though, as the ultimate conclusion is the skill up rate for guard is entirely too low when skills like shield and every weapon in the game can be capped in 1/100th of the time

[RAIST]

don't think you're quite grasping the concept either...-30 evasion from that atma is just a drop in the bucket when your natural evasion skill is at what....376? It might not even be enough to counter just what you get from the extra agility on cruror buffs. You could probably get the same effect from gear, and not be dealing with the interference from the increased counter rate. All I know is at just 91 and running regen/regain atmas and cruor buffs, I took quite a pounding at times from those Canyon Scorps with capped skill, and the skillups were coming pretty steady for me.

With your setup, you might need to just skip Abyssea completely for that matter and just tweak your stats with gear. Not like there is a vast shortage of mobs 70+ you can pull in mass somewhere else. Have to think outside the box if what you are doing isn't working.