Best way to skillup parrying?

[Spider-Dan]

I'm considering buying a couple of Parrying Knives and running around. The problem is, you have to be facing the mob in order to get the parry check. If I'm facing it, I'll hit it, which is no good.

My best guess right now is to use a sleep potion, and fight against something low enough that it won't be able to actually hit me for a good long time. (preferably with THF main, since I'll get Evasion bonuses) I'm pretty sure that I've gotten parry and shield blocks while asleep.

Any other suggestions? Is it better to grab a mass of linking mobs and try to get 387643 parry checks per minute?

[leii]

yeah my parry is like sooo low. i need to raise it too.

[METDeath]

As a monk I use the following method to raise guard skill (crappy ascii graphics follow):

O> <O -- O
| --- | ---- \
Me - Mob -- Some random mob off in the distance, but close enough to be engaged

agro mob, switch targets, and stay alive, /whm is probably good for this, specially 50+ just for auto regen and regen and prot and what not too... and the cures... but yeah... same skill ranges as weapon skill levels apply, so, obviously better to do this low level and cap it, then tank a lot, and then go practice capping it more... for my parry/shield (both 30s) I've just been leveling every melee job possible, adds up to a lot of time spent taking blows, also soloing helps as well...

[Tsubame]

That's a really clever idea MET, I've just been soloing things...

Say, your in MP too? So am I, Dymphna if you've seen me...(I'm usually on GA though, not MP)

[Demetrios]

Take Paladin up to lv75, then start as a lvl1 Ninja^^;

[Soliloquy]

I plan on heading to Yuhtunga with a couple of parrying knives and a high level RDM friend - he wanted to skill up some things, and that's about the right point to skill up parrying for me (~70), plus they're fast attackers that do very little damage... ^^

I think something like that would be a good idea, but if your parrying skill is low enough relative to your level, you could find some too weak monsters and just let them beat you up for a while. When you're high enough to get stoneskin with /WHM, that might help out.