skilled mine to cap by taking advantage of Martial Master. Went outside town, thwacked enough bees to build some TP, then spammed the spells for a while. Granted, I didn't have too far to go because of all the soloing and low-man stuff I would do on WHM and BLM (not just trials, I used to fart around on them a lot just to see what I could pull off) and it was already just past 86 caps naturally....but it only took me basically one weekend to recap it during some down-time in game.

Maybe that is why it seems so harsh for some, idk....perhaps the new race to 99 deprived players the joys/benefits of soloing mage jobs, so skills are still really low at 99.