Parrying Setup - Worth It?

Did not! Totally skipped the update coverage for the most part so as not to get roped back into the game. lol

*ropes you back in*
http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/?topic_id=5946

EFF THAT'S COOL. D;

I know right! Much cooler than these 150 or so new crappy NM drops off of crazy nms.

Here's some information about Parrying...

Capped Parrying for SAM (269 before gear/merits) returns roughly a 21-22% parry rate. I forget who did the parsing and what level mob it was, but it was either EM or T at 75 for the testing with a quite large sample size.

Parry can proc on AoE and other mob TP moves (as can Guard), so if you are fighting a bunny in Terrigan FoV and you get an "Evades" on whirl claws, chances are that it was a Parry in actuality. I know this because I have gotten skillups for Parry from that very TP move doing FoV out there on BST.

Otherwise, for Parrying skillups at higher levels, stack Parrying Skill and AGI as much as possible (Seiryu's Kote FTW), then PDT where you can't get the other two. Bring additional PDT gear to swap out pieces indivually depending on the mob.

I could solo EM-T Puck (Den of Rancor, back entrance from Yhoator Jungle) on SAM/DNC with a mixture of Parry/Evasion/AGI gear and have no real trouble staying alive. Most of the time just the Drain Samba II was enough to keep HP up.

More commonly I'd skill Parrying soloing Ul'Phuabo in Sea for merits (there are 5 spawns in a loop from Palace going SW either CW or CCW, and I could get chain 4 fairly regularly). I wouldn't always have full parrying setup on because I needed to be alive, but I got plenty of skillups and fuel for my Justice Sword in the process. That was a lot more pleasant than killing Colibri for me.

Also, if you skillup on SAM, Parry procs BEFORE Third Eye, so it's safe to keep Seigan and Third Eye up full time, because it should not detract from your parrying skillups at all.

My notable gear pieces for Parrying Skillup:

Kirin's Osode (10 AGI), Seiryu's Kote (15 AGI), Parrying Torque (7 Skill), Parrying Earring (3 Skill), Bushinomimi (5 Skill), Boxer's Mantle (10 Skill), Myochin Haidate +1 (10 Skill), and Emissary Boots (5 Skill).

Askar Gambieras are probably a good alternative for feet with 3 AGI and PDT.

I recently quit playing, and capped Parrying for SAM (on Darkmoose) was one of my "won the game" moments that I was looking to accomplish, so best of luck to anyone else shooting for it.

I'm sitting in sea right now whacking away at a VT Om'Phuabo on NIN with parry knives, boxer's, emissary, 3 merits. At 241.7. For the most part I've been getting better returns on DC-T though.
I've been doing the same setup on Boyahda on 2-3 pucks at the same time /dnc.
My parry returns are already pretty high on certain mobs, so I'd say it's worth it.

Thanks for those notes, Aramina, very helpful! Parrying was always one of those "won the game" things for me as well, but I only made it to 211 before I teetered out.

Yeah, I am certain if I'd focused on doing it regularly instead of when I wasn't busy with other stuff, I'm sure that I would have capped it before I handed off my characters to my buddy. I really wish I had done that.

I found it helpful to set short-term goals like 1 point per outing, or 5 points per week. SAM/DNC and NIN/DNC are probably among the better jobs for skilling up high level parrying. RDM is excellent (especially /WAR or /BLU) good for a long time, but I think it caps quite a bit lower.

Best returns for me were on mobs that were about T-VT with respect to the parrying skill range I was going for (same as for weapon skillups), so if you wanted to skill Parry in the 200-225 Range, you would want mobs that had the max capability of maybe 240ish skill, since it slows down in that last little bit.

Mourioche are good to around 200, but the skillups off them are so few and far between after that. The nice thing was that I could have 3 or 4 of them at once on SAM and be fine as far as staying alive. Puck and Korrigan are a bit tougher because you actually have to pay attention, and Ul'Phuabo are actually quite challenging.

Soloing Chain 5 on those once was one of those "wow, did I just do that?" moments, mostly because the spawns are so far apart that you have to kill them fairly quickly and hope that no one is dorking around with them while waiting for their Sea crew. That is not to mention that they have some seriously mean TP moves, too.

parrying saved me ALOT of times in tons of fights

Caiyou, you can't really say anything! You don't even play anymore, you fool!