Shield Skillups

I was up to about 365 shield when I went back to Aby altepa to finish capping it. Unfortunately I did not have much luck. I spent over an hour with 15+ mandragora beating on me, wasted several Montagna for all of 2 skill points. I decided to move to Aby Misareaux Coast Mandragoras instead and got the last 60 or so levels in about 20-30 minutes. It's a pain trying to get a big enough group so if you go there, make sure to buff BEFORE you start pulling mandragora as they do not link or aggro. However, once you have a good group the skill ups fly by. I was using Montagna there too, with a Maringna thrown in at the end once I got close to 400. Be sure to keep Phalanx up on these ones, they like to hit hard and fast. Using Reprisal or Palisade helps in casting Phalanx without being interrupted. Hope this helps anyone who might be having problems skilling off of the aby altepa mandragoras.

dynamis shield, 5-10 altepa dolls when they con tough. apoc/RR/savior(normal atma i use) isn't bad for skill ups, harder the mobs faster the skill ups! this way of skilling up would be made way easier with ochain too

glad I waited until i made ochain to bother skilling up! this thing is ridiculous

1- Do not burn Paladin
2- Play paladin and let stuff hit you
3- Actually fight things when you are of level, instead of standing in jeuno.
4-If you are a Paladin trying to skill up your last few levels disregard this message.
5- I dont trust abyssea born players, for any reason what so ever. Unless they played the game when things might of been a challenge, I have shut my gates to recruitment of any kind.
6- As stupid as some of us may see it, I have a lot of respect for those few people leveling their jobs outside of abyssea, and soloing or low manning to as close to 99 as possible before entering for xp.

I used a Bloom Buckler and some -PDT gear along with RDM mule. Nothing special. I also got parry from the 240s into the 310s with a similar method on onions.

Phalanx and Paliside / Reprisal, go to altepa pull as many mandys as you can, and bring a healer, I did that with a crappy shield off the AH cause the stupid bird in La Thein would never drop that shield for me >_>

Took about an hour to go from 276(75 cap) to w/e Lv.95 cap was.

I solo/duoed most of my levels, but I still was pretty far off on the skill level when I eventually hit 99 some time ago with this job. There is another post on here regarding the mandragora's in Tahrongi. I would like to add onto that. So far I've used this method to get from around 300 to 394 so far. Adjust accordingly depending on what atmas you have access to and what gear you are wearing.

I threw on x3 regen atmas and pulled between 7-10 mandragoras, then
I slowly pulled them off to the edge of the map where it is the intersection of J-8/9. Right in that corner there is a small piece of rock that sticks out next to a small indent in the rock wall.

Anyway, if you pull right up to that small rock portion that sticks out the pile of mandragora's will not fan out, they will stay stacked on top of each other. Run around and reposition them until this works.

One side note, I recommend going /dnc so you can cure here and there if need be, buy a size 1 buckler of some kind, and finally remove your sword so you are only swinging with your fist.

Use Palisade and Reprisal as you are able to and it should work out reasonably for you. I'm not sure what the minimum skill level is for this but it has worked well for me, best of luck.

If you wear PDT gear and have capped enhancing for Phalanx you probably wouldn't even need /DNC, allowing you to /WAR for Defender and Aggressor (reduced evasion, more chances to block). Should be workable even with 0 skill due to the sheer number of hits taken per unit time, I've done similar for Retaliation skillups.

That would work just as well I'm sure. I've had a few drinks so hitting the Waltz macro is a bit easier. Very good call though.

Don't sub /DNC. DNC has a higher eva then /RDM. Plus with /RDM you have a higher Fast cast and beleave me you will get more skill ups.
Use Apoc/Lions/Heavens for more -phy dmg taken. Food Montagnas.
best place mandies in Abyssea Attowa.
Have fun!

Edit
You might need to kill some to get them to DC range, DCs help skills even tho some will say it don't matter. It does.

AFAIK sub skill doesn't affect primary, but could've changed I guess.

Didnt they change it so you can get a skill up even if you dont block?

He was probably referring to the Job Traits you gain from your SJ. Dancer has Evasion Bonus II trait up to SJ lvl.

And yes, Quiznor, they raised skillup gain rate so you can even gain skillups when block and guard don't proc.

Besides that, if anyone wanted to cap shield on PLD, aside from using the skillup food corresponding to the level range they were at (which I recommend using), they could easily pull a whole camp of mandies, (I went with Aby Atto) while /Rdm and need nothing but the usual Pdt Atmas and Phalanx to hold them all. The thing's hilarious to watch XD

You can get 50% PDT in gear, you can't get 70/tic regen in gear. Apoc essentially does nothing.

Pretty sure that adjustment was parry and guard only, not shield.

You're probably right. Either way with the amount of mobs a PDT'd PLD can hold to skillup it would be overkill, hehe. It was the briefest and funniest skill to cap.

what is the full name for ochain

Ochain

I love you, Kawar.

Not to sound mean but if this forum had sigs I would totally have this as mine..

man, almost woke up my gf from laughing while reading this in bed on my phone.

His last name is Rodriguez.

How would you stop this from looping?

//alias healloop ;

thank you