Guard Skill-Up Locations And Set Ups

Alright, after the update it seems like guard is actually levelable, something I would have never dreamed possible.

Now that it is possible, I'm wondering where I should go to level it, what gear I should use and what my sub/strategy should be. Most of what I've seen is people leveling it on PUP.

My current skill is 170ish if I remember, if I need to start somewhere else for it being that low.

/dnc, abyssea, regen atma, mandy mobs (or any double attacking mobs). Link and go nuts. Same we've always done for guard, parry, eva and shield but quicker now.

The older way to skill guard was throw on guard gear, and fight mobs 2 levels higher than your current skill. For example i believe it was 276 for 75 for an A+ in something, so if you were at 265 guard skill, you would want to fight level 75 mobs. But with the new update, it sounds like all you need to do is get hit by mobs, so yes, do abyssea regen atma /dnc as razor said. Good luck.

All right, so no special gear at all then? Well, I'll slap on my Prouesse Ring, but other then that just use my standard set?

The big problem with leveling up guard has always been it's proc rate. Even with capped skill, it only activated something like <5% of the time. Then, you'd have the whatever percentage chance of a skillup of that 5%.

So yeah, like it's been said, basically it's all the same, except not having to worry about actually guarding anything.

You might as well throw on all guard gear you can. You can still guard for skillups, so stull like afv1 legs or afv2 feet will still help.

Ok, thanks. I'll try to get to it soon then.

you don't even need to guard to get guard skill ups now. I'm sure in the past you noticed that even if you take a hit you could get an eva skill up. Might be the same now. At least that's my interpretation of it. I haven't been out to try it myself.

To give you an idea on how quick it levels, I gained about 90 skill levels in 30 minutes while I leveled both guard and parry. If you got a rdm friend or anything like that just phalanx and pull any type of abyssea mobs for you to get a skill up. Atmas would be the regen atmas obviously. Just a note though, even though you don't have to guard/parry, it seems to me I only got skill ups if their hits connected, so if you're too evasive it's not going to benefit you. Also it should go without saying, you must be face to face with the mob as usual.

I just did my PDT set, popped skill up food, /dnc, Mounted Champ, VV, Sea Daughter and pulled around 5-6 DC mandies and targetted the one my char couldn't see...got bored in 15 minutes but went up like 10 levels (335 or so). Good luck

How would the Raptors in Abyssea - Uleguerand be? I've got an LS that fights those for lower jobs to do the Op for Exp and I'm overdue in not leeching.

Went in last nite to altepa aby near flux #6 no -PDT gear no skillup food, came as /RDM (probably a bad subjob, will do /DNC again tonite)for phalanx, used DG/MC and I think RR atma,kept pulls to a max of 4 mandies mobs and whitin 30 minutes there went from 36 guard skill to 127 guard skill, only tried to keep mobs in a direct line against me parallel to the walls, no particular mob got targeted and kept getting a lot of 0.5, guess I could have gotten close to cap if it hasn't been close to my bedtime, only issue there it was that there were more people than mobs skilling up lol, hope it helps.

I went in twice, once last night, once today...

Both times I went /DNC, and both times I used 3 regen atma... (Stronghold, Mounted Champion, third is from Fistule I think)...

Used pretty much -PDT gear, had PDT -46% total... I don't have Proeusse or Terminus... used skill up food the second visit...

Last Night: spent ~30 minutes... mobs were all even match... went from 269 to 280. Left due to absurd competition, douche bags using Aeolian Edge and people trying to MPK with the Cactuar. Had to use Curing Waltz III frequently, mobs had decent accuracy, so damage dealt was pretty constant.

Today: spent ~60 minutes... a chunk of that time was spent moving mandragoras to the area near the Bonfire mobs... there was a BLU running around using Charged Whisker and training the Cactuar to people, so I snuck off with about 10-15 Mandies. Went from 280 to around 310 before counter killed most of them off... left after that for now. The mobs were all easy prey, and had poor accuracy. I didn't need to bother with Curing Waltz or chakra at all in this case, and just did some homework while I waited.

Damn straight you don't have me! I'm a free spirit!

But that sounds like a good plan, and is kinda encouraging for people looking to cap that up.

I had the same issues. I ended up pulling 6 mandies FAR AWAY from the flux.

Went for 2 hours today. Went from 300 too 400 eatting skill food in [A] Altepa.


Use w/e regen and pdt gear you want, but work in the AF3+2 hands. The +TP from guarding is pretty nice if you plan on tanking 7 mobs without anyone to assist you. (And you are not engaging the mobs you are alowing to build up your guard.)

I got about 1 point per minute going from 245 to cap (417) fighting 8 to 10 DC/EM Mandies at a time in Aby Altepa. Used Ducal Guard, Mounted Champ and Vicissitude atmas. I only got the HP and AGI/VIT cruor buffs, no STR/DEX. I had no weapon equipped and had -20% PDT in gear from BB, Twilight Torque, Jelly Ring and an augmented Dark Ring. I also used Boxer's, AF1 pants, AF2 feet, Guarding Earring and Feral Mask that I had sitting around from long ago attempts at skilling guard.

I can't confirm this, but it seemed like I only got skill ups from mobs that were in front of me, within the range that you can guard and attack. You can easily bunch them all up by dragging them alongside a wall.

Other than that, just slowly wear down each mandy with bare fists, switching targets before you kill any of them. I'd usually switch around 25% HP to leave some room for counters. Once they're all near death, kill them off quickly, open any chests if you want, and go get another batch.

I went to go skill up guard...

Probably a decent enough skill to have capped for stuff like NNI where what you fight the majority of the time is rather low level.
Same for parry on other jobs, while it might not do much on hard stuff, you'll probably have 10-20% parry rate with capped skill in NNI

Was doing void watch last night, I forget which mob but the ninja or charmed and came after me. Went from 97 to 102 I'm about 45 seconds lol

I did 150 to 200 on Tahronghi on Mandies in about an hour with a Saltena.

Went to the one mandy camp with my RDM mule dual box (hint: Attoahwa is safer than Altep as no NM spawns with the onions), focused gear on -PDT and +AGI, and used Sea Daughter/Earth Wyrm/random def Atma for my Atmas. I did most of the work during the daylight to take advantage of Sea Daughter regen atma, and the slow atma is useful. Later found another that was skilling guarding as well and we set up our onions that we aggroed across from each other and engaged the ones further away (starts at 3:00 of the video). There was too much competition to pull a large horde of onions at once.

My mule kept up Protect V, Haste, Phalanx II (5/5 merited) and Regen II.

Account not active but if it's like evasion, guard is a joke to skill up now.

Now when you all get your capped guard, you'll see how the ppl back at 75 who had it capped were serious when we said that having capped guard is worthless lol

It still seems significantly lower than I remember evasion being to skill up, but still pretty damn fast compared to before...

This could also be because my guarding level (~320ish now I think) is much lower than the mobs I'm fighting (Lv.90ish mobs)... might pick up a bit as I get closer to mobs my level...

I hated skilling guard so much at 75 cap, that I have ignored it till now.

But my skill was still about 300: can concur with Francisco here, with skill up food using pure defense atmas in Abyssea-Mis Pulling mass amount so mandies near flux 8. I was able to cap guard in about 4 hours. Well worth the time and about a stack of food.