Tips On Leveling Guard?

Aye yo here is an idea since u want to work on guard so much and seem to want to mindlessly kill mandies.
~Go to abyssea-tahrongi cap your amber pull a bunch of mobs and auto attack them while skilling up; use the Ki's you get to pop Chloris(get moar skillups) make Vere. Makes more sense then killing mandies that drop nothing.

~Btw gaurd isnt that hard to skill up now(dunno if i got luck or not) but just by making lvl 80 Vere x2, tanking/farming on mnk i went from lvl 80ish guard to 190. ( Both were done in 2 days) prolly just about the same time you will be spending in the tree to come out with beastmen seals.

No it's not like shield, shield procs, Guard does not. It's more like parry than anything, awful.

Tips on leveling guard: don't!










unless it's for the blue box.

At least Parrying actually keeps you from being hit. Even if the stars align and you recite the incantation perfectly to get Guard to proc, you still take damage.

Ah well, I'm still gonna level it. I have Smite and 1/5 +2 atm. But I have time in the mornings when I'm doing nothing until my Duo partner gets on. I'm not worried about the time it takes, especially if I just go in abyssea and put on Regen Atmas with -PDT and /dnc.

If there was any actual downfalls to Guard, then I wouldn't level it. But there must be a difference between 60 Guard and 250 Guard. More Procs (A little bit of extra TP from Tactical Guard), and maybe damage reduced better when you do guard, I dunno. Anyways, I'mma level it :P, I'm one of those Blue Box individuals when it comes to Skill Levels.

Shield Skill procs so often because of a few factors unlike Parry/Guard indeed:

1) They have 6 Shield "types," all of which increase block rate by a certain amount.

2) Their Skill starts at A+, where as Parry/Guard starts at A-.

3) Much lower Evasion Skill than NIN or MNK.

Even with capped Guard, you'll be floored on anything greater than Even Match, and only receive a 5~10% proc rate since the monsters will all have A+ "skill," and at a much higher cap when compared to your capped Guard. This will lead you to need to pile on tons of Guard Skill + gear to increase the proc rate, lowering your damage (because you are no longer wearing proper TP gear). From there, relying on Guard versus just using PDT gear is also a boon-- most mobs in Abyssea EM+ have capped attack vs your character, rendering Guard once again useless, where as PDT has a static reduced damage taken on all incoming attacks.

I remember making a Guard thread a while ago when SE made the announcement about enhanced skill and I caught some of the same flak as well, so I decided to speed skill Guard and Parry in Abyssea and parse the results for myself to play with and look at to confirm (I did Guard from 104 to 201 and Parry from 154 ish or so to 302). Within the millions of mandy attack rounds, the proc rate for both skills never once reached above 10%, and also dipped below 5% to as low as 3.5% a few times. Awesome way to cap both skills however, "useless" or not. I'll probably finish both skills because of the sheer ease of letting 30 mandies beat on you and afking every 4 mins after recasting Phalanx from my RDM mule.

If they really wanted to fix Guard/Parry, they should raise the skill(s) to A+ and then add a trait that raises the base proc rate by a certain percentage. Or they could tack on some skill+ to "AF3+3" at lvl 95 cap or something, lol. I have a feeling back in the day, SE never updated Guard/Parry solely because of the mass use of Utsusemi.

Except for there's only going to be a difference in proc rate on mobs that are so weak it makes no diff anyways. On any mob worth having guard proc, capped skill or not, unless you *** guard+ gear in every slot (which is better used by PDT, evasion, counter+, etc.), then you're gonna be floored at guard rate, which is 5%, which is the same proc rate w/ guard at 0 skill.

Im gonna try cap guard soon too, useless but I rather do this than get another empy, rather have something that not everyone has. Hopefully they will update/improve proc rate somehow in the future.

"Lazy much, Compare your self to a monk with capped guard. After that go kill your self"

Despite what I said im still laughing at this.

That's the thing - if you're doing it for fun, as a challenge, out of boredom - that's all good. It just doesn't seem like a game changing (or even game impacting) change at all. I think it would be totally rad to cap it.

Last post and i promise I will shut up. Since when was there a limit set on guarding skill percentage. Five percent seem a bit low considering i have activated guard five times in a row. Then again with gear my guard is 278 and much like shield the higher the skill the better chance of a potential guard. Watch Genome guard video on youtube that what he was capable of at 75. He the guy that made me wanna both play monk and be great at it. The fact of the matter is I was lazy to i though why would i need to level guard. That with i saw a monk to the impossible and solo ODS.

Get as much Guard Skill + Armor and LEAST EVA and AGI +

then get your GUARD LVL (Divided) by 3 = lvl of the mobs u gotta fight for Optimal Skills

^^

At least That is what I heard and Researched so far

I always wondered about Genome. Firstly, how many unposted videos were made for every one he posted. But yeah, it was pretty cool what he did. It was pretty funny seeing him survive a bunch of random encounters. At the same time, he sacrificed a lot in order to do it. If absolutely pushing your limits in every way possible is your goal - good for you, I hope you do well. Still, at best, guard requires the most time and offers the least returns. So if everything else on your monk wish list is checked off, best of luck. At my level of play, I really can't say much as there are TONS of other improvements for me to make first.

Also, if you want good results as far as proc rate, parse it yourself. Math is important, and reading other people's results is useful, but your gear, your play style, your mobs = your own individual results. Test it out yourself.

Genome is AWESOME :D

Now, you're just trolling. Go away.

Genome inspired you to lvl guard, cute.

Isn't that 5% proc rate of Guard also diminished further by your Evasion, Counter rate and Utsusemi?

278 skill? thats it lol? back at 75 with capped guard i could hit iirc like 310 skill....and it was useless. But sure its fun when a spike flail misses u and u get a guard skill up, but guard is useless. Take it from a mnk that has done it...used it...and regreated sinking time into it. ***i wanted guard to be good so bad, started thinking up ideas for JA's to make it usefull lol. Guardstance anyone? lol

Well in the overall aspect yea, but when I refer to 5% proc rate, I mean 5% of the attacks that actually land.

If you're taking counter eva, and shadows into the equation, it's probably less than 2%

I do wonder however, about old content. I'm sure Guard/Parry woudl activate more frequently in old events like Nyzul/Limbus/Einherjar/Assault/Salvage where the majority of the mobs are lvl 65~85 at best.

Random question from no-where: Are Chariot normal attacks counted as magical or ranged damage?

Normal physical attacks, yeah? They crit, they're affected by PDT, and they can't hit you from a distance.

I see I see. Maybe some use for Guard would be for Salvage boss tanking then, lol. Then again good MNKs won't let a boss live long enough to take advantage of guarding. >.>

Meh, here's to hoping SE makes the other two defensive skills good in future.

Law of averages, look that ***up. Same reason you get 3-4 skill ups in a row.

A good Salavage MNK tank doesn't get hit much at all aside from TP attacks.

Um.. First off, mnk don't parry with h2h which is required to guard. Second, unless his "session" lasts a few days or so non-stop, 60-90 skill lvls wont happen. Certainly not going into abyssea with only 70 skill to begin with. His chances of actually guarding an attack are going to be very slim and his chances of gaining a skill point when it finally does proc are even slimmer yet.

Agreeing with everyone else here(even though I once capped my skill) guard is NOT useless.. but it IS a waste of time. If you insist on skilling it, I suggest you just skill it like you would skill up most other skills, just find mnk mobs to beat on you for hours. Obviously if your fighting a mob high lvl, your chances of guarding(like I said above) at skill lvl 70 will be very slim.

-pdt atmas / gear, friend or mule to hit u up with phalanx2 and cures, and go aggro the mandies in abys altepa; have them all lined up infront of u while u target something out of range, and let them hit u for 0 till they die from counter.

thats how i capped guard from level 200~ in a couple of nights. same goes for parry.

Maybe guard doesn't proc as much as some would like considering the time put into it getting it there. BUT it is however a big thing imo. As the dude who everybody seems to be hating on did state it is another check in the damage taken calculation. Regardless of how much it procs, is it not optimal to have it capped anyway? That way you'll see the most possible usage out of it. Older content is being revitalized and it may prove useful.

Personally i love it just 'cause it is possible to guard tp moves.

Side note: Genome did do extensive testing on guard and he claimed that AGI and guard procs are also directly proportional. Also, now i'm really not sure about this as i'm not a mathlete but is there some kind of check for guard directly proportional to an attacking mobs stats if AGI does increase the rate? Kinda like how the more you level and stack AGI gear a mob's likelyhood of critting you lowers?

All in all, i just think if it's there, make the best out of it.

Did you just say Genome? His "extensive" testing also said that agi increases kick attack rate, lol

That guy was a total joke.

There are a lot of things that are "optimal"

However, there is something called a priority as well.

In the end, when all is said and done, yes it would be optimal.

But before it's all said and done, no, it is not.

For example, if you have capped guarding and not vicotry smite, that is no where even close to optimal. The time spent leveling guard could have went to victory smite.

Can you afford red curry buns for every meal? If not, you'd be more optimal farming for those rather than skilling guard.

Have full af3+2, epona's etc? If not, your time would better be spent pursuing that than capped guard.

So at the end of the day, yes, optimally, go for capped guard. If pursue guard before the more important things, its far from optimal and is a poor investment

What else are you gonna do once you max out your monk? I think it's worth it, if similar to parry. Probably 10% to guard or better vs em ***when it's maxxed out.

Not even hard to cap it no more with skillup ring and skill up foods, took me little under 10 hours to go from 254 to 354. If you aren't capping it then you're just lazy.