Guard Skill Up Locations

Okay, so first off, I think I should mention that I'm skilling up guard on PUP, but thought I'd get more answers by posting in here. I've been putting off on trying to cap my guard skill for a while now but decided, with all my +2 gear farming done, I should get on that. I'm currently @200 Guard skill (219 in gear/229 if I add Boxers; but I evade too much without it so this wouldn't help right now.)

I was wondering any MNK here knew good skill up spots for Guard. I figured the tree for a while. And there's obviously Abyssea, but the skill ups there are rather slow and far between. If anyone could give some advise on locations, it'd be much appreciated.

And just so we can get this out of everyone's systems...

Pup is awesome... you could try regen/PDT atmas and do mandies in the canyon.. You could also try Pucks in Den of Rancor.

pucks in den may be a bit too high for u. @200 skill the black mandys in the tree should do u just fine. As pup u should more then be able to handle 3 at a time.

Dont even go close to abyssea till ur over 320~30 skill (w/o gear) u can cap on den pucks at about 276~ish skill (can go higher but for that camp skill starts to slow down, .1 every hour or so, at like 270). After that look into hitting up the past, like jugner forest .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP5rA_xZKWU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdE1kH948uk&feature=related

I prefer with the game changes now using Mnk/Rdm past lv 82, My guard was about 250 pre abyssea, now I have it to almost 300, because mnk/rdm can go do puck at 90 with very little damage taken with def guard build and with martial master fly up in skill.

It does become very hard once you get to 290, I have not found an effective fast way to take it past 300 out side of tanking as mnk.

Thanks for the info, been putting it off myself :) PUP is awesome btw.

With it* you mean. You evade too much with it so youre taking it off.

As for saying dont even go close to abyssea till ur over 300 skill lvl is wrong.

Never realized there were so many PUP supports, especially from MNKs lol. Yeah, I decided to hit abyssea up again last night but I got 5 skill levels in one hours. Still feels slow to me... The mandies in the tree have terrible accuracy so I was thinking I need to sub war and Aggressor for the eva down effect on it.

PUP doesn't get too many Damage Taken- gear options (few caps, few rings, twilight torque and magian h2h are all that come to mind.)

well the reason i say dont go in till after 300, ur guard rate will be shitty compared to the skill lvl of the mobs. Making guard proc less, hence less skill up chance.

Not saying u cant get skill ups in there, but if ur soley out to skill guard it would be much better if u target a mobs lvl to ur current skill lvl. ex guard @276 (lvl 75 skill) for good proc rates/skill ups you would look to fight mobs that range from EM to T to a lvl 75 character (76-80).

FWIW, I hit 250 guard about a week ago, and since then I've been getting a LOT more skill ups just from tanking crap in Abyssea (mostly Ulhuadshi, some Fistule and other NMs)... up to 261 now. 11 levels in a little over a week is pretty good for "not trying"...

To show that your mileage may vary:

Capped before Abyssea was released, I am now at 280 skill, so 11 levels in close to a *** year? I even went to Altepa one time to play with mandies for about an hour with no guard skill up procs.

Meanwhile my gimp parry loves to skill up. Mind you, it is only able to skill when I equip a staff/club for proc or when I come NIN so compared to the time I have a chance to proc a guard skill up it is stupid. Parry went from 120ish to 150+ :/

It's not really fair to compare <200 skill skillups to >200 skills. The skillup rate definitely changes (drops) at 200 Skill. Both Parrying and Guard suffer from the same major problem, which is a low proc rate against monsters that you can get skill ups from.

How is not fair to point out a flaw in game design? While I haven't noticed a decrease in skill gain like you claim from 200>269 back at 75 cap. SE taunting me with parry skill up procs as soon as I get out my staff for Sunburst or Earth Crusher, while I don't see a skill up for guard in two weeks is just stupid.

I was doing mandies in Canyon-abyssea last night. mnk/dnc, drain samba2, curing waltz3. Used HP atama X2(SS and cant remember other) and mounted champion.

I was wearing Genbu's Kabuto, Melee Cyclas, Melee Gloves, Temple Hose, Melee Gaiters, Guarding Torque, Black Belt, Succor ring, Raja's ring.
Mandies were hitting me 7-65 hp an attack. i went from 173 to 180 guard and capped evasion in 1 hour.

if you dont want to do abyssea. You could try chioges in Caederva mire? or adyewa subtaerane?

Can someone tell me why capping gaurd is so important, is it just for blue writing? Or does it actaully do something?

Yes I have mnk lvl'd, my gaurd skill is like 28, and I use avengers so my opinion doesn't count for anything.

Well, even if you don't count the dmg reduction similar to a shield block on normal hits that are guarded (as in, that just isn't enough of an effect for you to even care about it), it also can kick in on physical TP moves, completely nullifying the damage. It says you evaded it though; the only way to tell the difference between a guarded and an evaded TP move is if you happen to get a guard skillup from it. :P

But then, of course, you wouldn't be able to tell at all once you had it capped. XD

Guard is pathetically weaker than a shield block, unfortunately. :(

It says evaded but you still take damage, look at your health bar when that happens. It goes down.

Seems like a gaint waste of time!

I must start at once.

You'd get more skillups replacing Avengers than if you actually tried.

Isn't five skill levels in one hours like, godly?

For what its worth you are probably counterstanced a lot more than you were <75. With our high counter rate and high AGI from atma/buffs in Abyssea we're less likely to be hit driving the chance for skill ups down even further.

Not rly, counterstance the same now as always.

Mob only tp moves? no counterstance
Mob use eagle eye shot? No counterstance
Few other rare situations? No counterstance


Everything else? Counterstance.

Rules apply pre and post abyssea.

Using Atma of the Lion, Atma of the Heavens, and Atma of the Mounted Champion + my RDM mule for Phalanx II, I was able to pull every single Fear Dearg @ Abyssea Altepa, and maintain time. I did my MNK the cheap way via Abyssea since I hate leveling jobs, but I got my Guard from approximately level 27 - capped @ 354 off of these mobs. Total time I think was about 25 hours.

From 27 - 120, I was gaining about 30 skill an hour, dropped off to about 10 an hour up until 270ish, then dropped down to about 5 skill an hour. Around 320, shot back up to approximately 10 an hour. I was not pulling all mobs at all times, but at a minimum was pulling about 10, typically all of the DC. With Phalanx II, they did 0 dmg, with the rare crit for 5-10 dmg, which the regen easily kept up with.

Not sure how much Prouesse Ring did or did not help, but I was glad I could get this done as quickly as I did... have a MNK friend that took years to cap @ level 75 cap.

Any Abyssea that you can do Mandies are good for getting skillups in my opinion. Hell, I'm sure PUP can prolly skill even faster due to lacking evasion skill and lack of Counter.

PUP has near close to the same skill and evasion bonus traits, though.

Never looked at the skills of PUP or the traits, have to say that this was rather surprising. Didn't know they were so evasive... lol

PUP also has shitty options for increasing guard skill through gear.

It's a flaw in game design for both systems. Your odds of skilling up per proc drop at 200 skill (approximately job level 60, where xp/level increases dramatically). Your odds of proc remain constant until you're almost at the cap for the monsters you're fighting. This means there's a huge dead range from 200 - 300+ skill where you have a ***skill up rate.

So you're comparing something before 200-300+ skill with something above it. That's what makes it an unfair comparison. Whipping your staff out and getting a .4 or .5 on a lucky Parrying proc (5% proc rate, maybe 50% skill up rate) is more likely than taking a hit and guarding (probably 5% proc rate, 5% skill up rate - These were the numbers I got from Parrying). Not to mention that Parrying can proc in front of Shadows, while Guard is even after Counter, so your effective Guard proc rate is probably much lower than Parrying on Monk in Abyssea (especially if you sub Ninja.)

It's a stupid system, but it's dumb for both groups. They should make the skill-rate relationship more gradual so that you can be 20-30 skill below cap and still have a non-floored proc rate.

The only unfair part is that pre-200 I can link a *** of EP's while at 250+ (at 75 cap) I'm lucky if I can get 3+ without phalanx. Considering that throughout my skilling back then I kept mobs at 3-4 except the very last part (that was only 3 or 4 when I had phalanx) I can honestly say that the skill up rate remained the same for 3-4mobs in my face.

I still consider guard more flawed than parry, because it is behind counter while the other is before utsu, like you said. So ya, guard has it worse. Especially for monks who applied Tiger's rules and used stance long before abyssea like myself. While parry is floored like guard at least it nulls dmg so you can finish utsu cast, when does guard save my life again? 1% of all cases? Parry's 5% sounds better.

Especially considering you don't have to cancel another life saving JA or spell like stance to get it to proc more. Imagine that you could only proc parry with utsu down... it would be utter ***, like guard.

For bladefury:
any nice location at that altepa mandy camp to line them up? What can I say, it's a ***skill, but I like it blue and I got 600+ stones. Besides humping some walls which took a while they didn't like lining up when I tried to link 8, not to mention I evaded like mad still, but maybe I shouldn't get agi cruor buff.

Pull the mobs to a wall, engage one, walk backwards with the wall to your right (left WON'T work). Eventually EVERY mob will sit on top of each other, and be in front of you. Was doing this with the 25 or w/e Fear Dearg mobs at the lake.

You can do this with any wall in the game that is considered a wall that a mob can't walk over... worked great for my parrying & guard.

Ah, thanks alot =)