Tips on raising shield/parry?

[Elusivellama]

It occurred to me that parry and shield could be useful for a RDM to have when soloing, so I went out fighting weak stuff and letting 6 or 7 of them attack me at once. My shield is at 23, parry is 20. I'm also level 41 with 80+ evasion.

But the stuff im fighting (Sandorian rabbits, Ghelsba tier 1 orcs) are too weak, and miss me too much. Even when they hit, my shield skill does not rise. I'm currently in Jugner fighting everything I see, and still no raise even when I have 3 gobs beating on me for 9-15dmg per hit (I cast regen, cure 2 and refresh to keep going).

What should I do at this point? Should I find stuff that's much closer to my level and let them beat on me? I have no clue how Shield and Parry are raised, so please help

[DM337]

I'm at Lv. 49, and my evasion is at about 110, my parry and shield are both around 40. You can get a lot of shield and parry boosts fightig stronger enemies. Just solo some 'too weak' stuff and it should go right up. At 41, you can take the strong stuff in Ordelle's Cave and Maze of Shakrami no problem solo. I'm talking about the monster that drop the chest keys in those dungeons.

[METDeath]

I'd check the pld forums, becasue this is a huge issue to them, i recently started training my 33mnk gaurd skill... i went and solo'd EP ghouls in hotoroto ruins, i found i could do three/four before i had a three min downtime due to HP

[Tan'o]

Equip a sword and shield on a Paladin or Warrior and solo them for awhile. At half your levels their shield and parry will be higher than yours and it won't take long for their sword to pass you either.

[Hopkins]

My method of raising shield and parry is to goto a place with weak mobs, i mean REAL weak. Even if they miss you a lot it doesn't matter. They dont need to hit you much to have a chance for you to parry or block.

Just get a ton of wasps or something with diaga, dont have protect on, take some of your armour off and let them whip on you a bit.

Stick regen on and wait and dont attack.

In Everquest the usual way of doing this was to duel a Necromancer and let their pet whip on your back for a while, sadly since there is no PvP in FF this isnt possible.

I like the solution of switching to warrior for a bit though, very innovative

[Tan'o]

Thanks. I don't have diaga yet so i can't do trains.Well maybe small stuff like Bumblebees or Tiny Mandragora I don't think my levels are high enough either. RDM 11 .

But I use WAR whenever I want to skill up anything except for magic. My staff on WHM was at 13 at level 9 so I put it on my WAR. I just ran around Tahronghi at 20 and I got up to 42 in about 1.5 hours. If you need to skill up anything except for magic, sue WAR. It can use almost anything and its skills in any of them arent that bad.

[Hopkins]

If i were to wager a guess at why RDM shield goes up so slow is because each class performs a number of checks to see if a skill succeeds.

So although red mage can use shields and have the skill they perform the check to see if a shield block is success much less than a thief or warrior etc..

So if you really want to cap that shield the best idea would be wait until you can use a subjob and sub THF/WAR etc perhaps.

[Shiia]

Yesterday I went to Quicksand to raise some of my skills (which was outdated...). My 1h sword was 138, evation 119, shield about 70. After 2hours and 30min, I gained 151 1h sword 142 evation (I am freaking out with this ), 79 shielding. I forgot to see parry though...

[Tukka]

One thing that I saw someone suggest in another thread was that they'd buff up with Phalanx, Stoneskin, Blink, Protect, Aquaveil, ect. and pull an IT mob to a zone line and melee/Cure themselves for as long as their mana supply holds out, then zone, /heal up, and repeat.

Not with any intention of actually killing the creature, obviously, but you do get many more/better skillups from fighting higher level enemies.

Haven't tried this myself though, but I plan on it eventually.

In Everquest the usual way of doing this was to duel a Necromancer and let their pet whip on your back for a while, sadly since there is no PvP in FF this isnt possible.

Yeah, you could build weapon skill the same way. I had my magician friend with pet discipline do /pet hold in an arena, and I whacked on it with a shovel for about 20 minutes while AFK to build my 2 hand blunt weapon skill from about 20 to something close to the cap. A perfect little training dummy.

[Strider3714]

The only chance I've really had for working on my Shield/Parry skills has been while farming. I'm sure it's not the fastest way, but hey, why not kill two birds with one stone?

Elayne
Lev 50rdm/20whm
Garuda
Black Lotus

[MMan530]

I've had a lot of success with that method Strider. If your shield/parry skills aren't going up at all while you're gilfarming, try to do so in a more difficult area.

I'm going to have to try fighting monsters at zones, that sounds like a good method too. I wouldn't recommend an IT, though- you may be casting Stoneskin and Blink more than you'd like.