Skilling up parry: A basic guideFollow

I've posted my experience and suggestions on skilling parry as thief a few times, and as expected, people continue to ask for ideas on how they can skill this up. This information can be usefull to other jobs as well. I decided to start a thread with this information so I have something to link these people to.

Please respond with further suggestions, and I may edit them into the main post. Im not looking for sticky here, but it deserves its own thread.
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Suggestions:

a.The order in which things check is :
Evade > parry > shadows> counter > Guard/shield > stoneskin > hit

It doesn't seem like a good idea to try and lvl parry and shield at the same time. It seems both will inevitably suffer, and you won't be satisfied with skillups from either. This is based mostly on the fact that weapon + shield is 50% less chance to parry simply based on number of weapons (i'm talking about dual wielding) But another big issue is that you can't lvl shield with shadows up. (anymore, you used to be able to)If you're not in a huge hurry for parrying skill, and would like to see some shield skill as well, go for it, but its gonna be more dangerous without shadows.

b. For the sake of this guide, there are "low" lvl parrying skill ups and "high" lvl parrying skill ups, and a little in between.

--------1.If your parrying skill is 75-125 less than it could cap at your lvl, this is low and actually somewhat easy to skill. Get as much -evasion stuff as you can (+parry stuff is arguable, some people say that + parry items can push you over the cap for a mob, reducing chance for skill up) and go poke a mandragora, too weak is fine, but the highest you can fight with no danger.
I did the ones in yhutunga jungle. I pulled one to test and it was no threat (i think i was about 56 thf/nin at the time) so i added another and so forth. The point is, grab as many mandies as you can safely manage, and just stand there faceing the group. I'd get up to about 8 before it got unwieldy and I couldn't face them all at once. If you get a little low on hp, change target to a reletively healthy one and pop some bloody bolts, always draining from the fullest one so you don't kill them too quick.
Eight minimonks pokeing at you is a fairly good source of skillups, but even under the best conditions you gotta be patient. when they're all near death i'd use cyclone to kill them all at once, heal up and start again.

--------2.Once the skill up points slows down from the mandies, its time for a different tactic. find one mob (preferably mnk type) that you can take easily (can stil be too weak) but has a little more life to it, i liked the mnk gigas in lufise meadows. I equipped the wooden katana for this one. this goes much in the same manner as the mandys. grab the giga (just one) and just stand there, with the wooden katana, you can make one last for like 30 min.
If you can get some help you can be outside healed to make this last even longer, so you don't have to use bloody bolts. You have to manage your hate carefully to keep the giga on you if someone's gonna heal you tho. sneak attack weaponskill to get hate back if you have to. protect helps as well. I found i could engage one and watch tv for 5-7 minutes at a time, come back, get healed, pull hate back, and watch tv some more.

--------3. Once skill starts slowing down on the gigas is where skilling starts to get a little harder, but certainly less boring. Take off all the -evasion stuff, equip reletively normal gear with some + parrying gear tossed in and find something to farm that's easy prey lvl. Because of evasion, thief can solo incredibly well at any lvl, easy prey are actually easy , unlike for some other jobs later in the game.
I farmed a lot of goblins in zitah about this time, (near the outpost, tier 3 gobs I believe, robbers and such) you'll even get 15-30 exp per kill. I got my parrying to a satisfying lvl at this point, enough to cap it as my 75 rng (at a pittiful 112) which was my initial goal, but the skill will keep trickleing in after that to about lvl 115 when it slows way down.

---------4. At about this lvl of skill you're running out of options. But the option thats left is pretty rewarding. I've been duoing thief with an equal lvl redmage (lvl 62-64 so far). With some evasion gear or merits in evasion from an alternate job, plus utsusemi ichi, thieves make good evasion tanks on mobs up to toguh, and *occasionally* VT. My rdm friend and i have duo'd Dire bats in King ranperres tomb quite easily for three lvls now. They very from even match to tough, net 60-120 exp each with fairly easy chains even with only 2 ppl, and are also a source of all the skill ups you'd ever want.
I've easily capped evasion every lvl (you can skill both parrying and evasion through shadows) and parrying slowly continues to rise. I think rdm is the best choice of duo partner, but it would probly work well with any other mage or support job as well with minimal tweeking.

c. quick tips include: -evasion is your friend for lower lvl parrying, giant bat type mobs have a -evasion special ability, mnks type mobs double your chances to skill, Love that wooden katana to prolonging skillup fights, you can skill up parrying and evasion through utsusemi, thief can solo/farm/tank some surprisingly high lvl things, +agi helps parrying, and, no matter what, be patient, lvling parrying is slow.

d. If you can't stand these methods, lvl a tank job(I say ninja for parrying)


Rumors:


There are all sorts of rumored ways to inrease parrying skill ups. I tried to limit my suggestions to things we know increase the number of chances you get to possibly get a parry skill (number of swings at you, lower evasion, higher parry skill from daggers.) but other things I have heard (that are very hard to prove or deny) include:

Agi increases your chance to parry more than it increases your evasion, therefor +agi is always good. Two handed weapons parry more. one weapon will parry more. Stumbleing sandles increase parrying/guard/shield skill. too much + parry can take you over the skill cap for a mob and reduce skill ups. there is no such thing as too much + parry. and so forth.

Some of these could be true and I'm sure there are more, use them as you see fit.

One thing to think about is finding the appropriate mob for your parrying skill lvl range. Parrying is A- for thief, so you're looking at skill lvl / 3... If you have parrying 100, thats capped parrying for a lvl32 ish thief, so you need to be skilling up on things that are EM or higher to lvl 33, but not too high because then their accuracy, or whatever affects the mobs chance to be parried, is too high for your low lvl parry skill to have much of a chance to go off.


This is all the parring information i've gained as a rng75 thf75 nin58. The only other-job suggestion I can make is that redmages can level parry very well useing phalanx because it allows them to continue the "train monks" method into the higher levels. Unfortunately, rdm's parry cap is fairly low, and as a ninja or theif, it will become uncapped at around 58.

Good luck lvling this usefull, but somewhat frustrateing skill.


Edited with some more information and some clarification.

Edited, Tue Feb 28 18:29:44 2006 by TheTomas

AGI Directly increases your rate to parry proc, shield proc, and (possibly?) guard proc.

You can ask any pld about the rate that agi helps, and probably ninja too. They know more about it i bet =p. The key is, that agility wont raise your evasion to a point where it would hinder your skillups.

You'd get more parrys per 1 agi+ than you would get evades. But I can see where if the skill is underleveled, and you're trying to get evasion way down, that it could be a problem. SPike earrings, tilt belt, stumbling sandles, hauby(if it fits your job). You can get plenty of -evasion stuffs to make skilling it up easier.

The biggest thing is surviving to level it up on harder mobs. As PLD my shield procs way to much now in exp to benefit any parry-ups. I suppose i could sub nin or use staff(not in exp duh)...hmm..But anyway. I've always been rather lost on the parry skillup ideas, good post thx for helping to put some basic ideas in motion. =)

-Lac

A trick i found while farming EPs and partially obvious in the OP: You can get parry skillups when engaged to a different mob than that which u are facing. (ie: I got a parry skill off a bee whilst engaged to a Tonberry). What I've done (with little success because I haven't put forth the effort to maximize my time for such) is pull a mob to a safe location where you dont get aggro, but there is a mob nearby. "Switch target" to the other mob and let the other whack at you... infinite life for it! Just make sure the other doesn't get close enough for attacking or link. What works is pull MNK Yagudo into that room at the top of Castle Oztroja, and switch target to a yag on the other side of the door and enjoy. Subbing WHM and using the MP steal moves might work to your advantage, but I havent tested that either =\
Good luck, mine hit 157 today, 75THF.

edit: wording, thanks for the hint.

Edited, Sun Feb 26 04:25:46 2006 by MadKrownLove

AGI affects all defensive skills, meaning Guard, Shield, Parry, Evade, and maybe Counter.

As a result most people use +AGI and -Evasion gear when they skill one such ability up, and Stumbling Sandals are a big nono.

Evade is the only defensive skill that can activate while not engaged. For the rest you need to be at least engaged, though not necessarily to the mob hitting you, and facing a mob to gain skill.

Evade > Utsusemi > Parry > Shield > Guard > Counter > Hit is the order, I believe.

Edited, Sun Feb 26 03:40:53 2006 by Priran

Madkrownlove, I understand what you're saying, but the way you're saying its confuseing. It would be helpfull if you edited the sentece that says you don't have to be engaged.

You have to have your weapons out to parry, but you do not have to be locked on (yes, engaged, but its confuseing) the target that you are parrying, you only have to be faceing it with weapons out. This means, as mad said, you can attack a mob, and switch target to something out of range and still parry the mob that is attacking you.

The rest of your post clarifies this, but i don't trust people to read past the first sentence if they think they're looking at something they already know.


This is good input guys, i'll edit the OP a bit with these additions after it gets a bit more attention, thank you for your help.

Edited, Sun Feb 26 03:48:46 2006 by TheTomas

Parry checks before shadows. The skill wouldn't be very useful to a NIN if it came after.

Also, don't Guard and Counter prevent you from taking damage? If so, it would be a little odd for them to check after shield, which only reduces the damage you take.

Counter completely negates damage to the player, while dealing damage to the mob.

Guard only lowers damage taken.

edited main post a bit.

As a THF in need of some skill ups (parry at the moment) i would like the OP for the time and efforst put in this post so that others can benefit from it.

Thank You!

thf/blu cocoon equip earth staff and any other -damage % and -evasion and pull monk type mobs. I would Imagine this should work well Cocoon=50% defense. have bloody bolts to fill up your HP as needed and pull safely. I am thinking of capping parry this way on RDM/blu first Rdm at 75 but my evasion is total crap so It shouldnt take too terribly long thief at 45 and I do not want my evasion to outpace my parry too far parry is just friggin awesome.