Mai’s Parrying Skillup!

Do you need it? Like most people already know (or loyal readers), I pretty much grind my parrying skills. Most people think its nearly impossible to cap parrying but that’s not really true. If you have the heart to do them, you’ll get them.

No you don’t need to Level a 75 “tank job” to do this. I am going to cap my parrying on Samurai (I only have rdm75 sam75 and blu75). So to all those that wants to cap but don’t want to level a new job, just read on.

The Juice of this Read

For those that don’t like to read all the stuff, I’ve provided you with the juice right here. This is by no means a guide because I haven’t really extensively collected data, but purely my experience in leveling parrying not by “going to exp parties or tanking gods”, which not everyone have access to, but something that anyone can do on their own. If you are looking for a parrying skillup place or for a quick reference of Mai’s suggestion, well here it is.

Parrying 0 –> 180 (Tank Mourouche in the Boyahda Tree).
Parrying 180 –> 225 (Decent Challenge Colibri at the Lv6x PT camp in the Bhaflau Thickets)
Parrying 225 –> 235 (DC Flamingo at Sky)
Parrying 235 –> 256 (DC – T Steelshell in the Boyahda Tree)
Parrying 256 –> 269 (Yet to find out)

What is Parrying Skill

Parrying skill is a defensive ability that utilize your weapon to null an attack in FFXI. Like evasion skill, the attack totally disappear when you “Parry” it. Since parrying utilize a weapon, that means you must have your weapon out and also facing the monster to have it parried. I don’t know the radius where you will parry, but assume a cone shape from where you are facing. Stuff on the side will most likely only take evasion skill.

When an atttack is directed at you, FFXI takes in all the variable (parrying, evasion) and determines if you will be taking damage or not. When a monster hits you, the calculation is as follows

• Does this player have enough “Evasion Skill” to evade this attack? If not…
• Does this player have enough “Parrying Skill” to parry this attack? If not…
• Does this player have some form of blinks? (Blink / Utsusemi / 3rd Eye) If not…
• Player takes damage… (Stoneskin, Buffs, Defense etc…)

So it goes Evasion Skill > Parrying Skill > Blinks > Damage. (The damage calculation).

How can I increase Parrying’s Proc Rate?

Sorry, this isn’t something that can be purchased. This can only be accomplished by “tanking” monsters. It doesn’t have to be Gods or anything powerful, but just generally monster that is “higher level” than your parrying skill. A person with 0 parrying skill will probably get skillup from Robber Crab while a person with Parry 260 will most likely get 0 parrying skillup, because his skill is already higher than the monster itself.

You can also wear parrying-skill enabled gear too. Those are equipment that are marked with

+5 to parrying skill (eg. Samurai AF1 Pants)

You can also wear Agility equipment. Rumors say for every 2 Agility, you get one extra parrying skill. I haven’t seen profs nor I’ll deny or accept this theory but… I just wear it anyway. Doesn’t hurt right?

Should I do this?

You got to ask yourself then. This is not something that can be accomplished within a day or a month, but months or even years. This is a test of patience and endurance. This goal was set back in 2004. I wanted a goal in this game, I pick one that is monetary related, and one is skill-related, and one grinding-related. I ended up picking “Goldsmithing 100, Solo a mob that most people afraid of (Fenrir Prime), and Parrying 269”. Will parrying be one of yours?

Maybe when this is all done, I’ll quit for WoW but at the moment, still entertaining xD!

Can I do this?

The only requirements is you need to have a healer of some sort (or you can self heal). In my case of a rdm, I was able to solo my parrying till 200. After that, you need a healer because monster you are dealing with are pretty insane.

Make some friends, especially RDM friends :) They have the MP pool plus the MP regeneration to go on forever and ever, BLM, BRD or WHM isn’t bad either. I was able to do…

Parrying skillup on Rdm/War solo
Parrying skillup on Sam/War duoed with a Bard/Whm OR Blm/Whm
Parrying skillup on Blu/War duoed with a Whm/Blm

I had lots of accounts to abuse =P Ciermel, Eruki, Tazo and Jayashaya xD. I just macro “/ma Cure 4 Maiev” and just “Alt-Tab” back and forth using Windower to self heal. Doesn’t take a lot of work but a bit of downtime when they need to rest. If you have no healers, then I believe this will be impossible :( Go make some friends then!

Parrying Lv0 –> 180 Capped on Rdm & Mourouche

I did this back when I was bored and only have 1-2hrs of free time. I would wear defense gear.

This is very soloable method. rdm/war, pop phalanx and defender, eat taco. In term of gear, what’s most important is.

• 5% dmg reduction (Cheviot Cape)
• 20% dmg reduction (Earth Staff)
• 5% dmg reduction (Jelly Ring)

The rest you can freestyle, I personally did not see a significant difference in pumping all defense gear (Phalanx Ring, W.Sets) So I wouldn’t stress too much on it. If you got no preference, do AGI. (2 agi earrings, 1 agi ring etc).

Here’s my parrying gear from June 2005!

If you are new to this, try one mourouche at first. What you have to keep in mind for this method is, your Phalanx must always be up. When your Stoneskin is off but your Phalanx is still in place, your damage taken per mob is roughly 0-5dmg per hit. This is actually not enough to interrupt your 10 sec stoneskin cast 90% of the time. Start adding more onions as you go along but if you have trouble, its time to run to the zone.

These thing stop giving parry skillup after 180. It would still have a chance to give you parry but each time would be 0.1! I learned it the hard way so don’t fall into it.

I did try other things such as Puck and Steelshell when I was Pre-180 Parry, and the conclusion was they aren’t worth the time. Horrible skillups…

I mean sure they give a 0.5, but that’s only a chance. They can also give 0.1 0.2 0.3 or 0.4. So if you spent all that time and SE decides to give you a 0.1, its pretty sad :( Makes taru babies to cry.

Skillup rate was roughly 0.75/hr, very consistent.

If you get a few friends, maybe you can pull a Rukenshin xD Although I think that’s a little too many Mandys :)

Parrying Lv180 –> 200 (Random Stuff)

I tried a lot of other alternatives, such as killing Imps & Puck @ Den of Rancor but ugh… it wasn’t still the right level.

I can’t seem to find a screenshot of Puck skillups, someday but… this level was horrible. I did ding 200 parrying on Puck, took ages and literally, a stack of Taco for each parry level. So literally 6 hours for like one level. I enjoyed it though, each parry skillups I would yell on Ventrilo.

Finally ding 200 on Puck, horrible horrible skillup rate. Totally wouldn’t go back to this method (or Puck for Pre 200)

Skillup rate was roughly 0.44/hr, very inconsistent.

Parrying Lv200 –> 225/235 (Exping on Samurai)

Honestly didn’t start getting serious about it until February. I was around 20x parrying skill and as soon as my Samurai got parrying uncapped, I just “stop exping in PT’s” and start soloing my way to 75. I started soloing on Samurai around Lv61 and I pretty much solo-ed my way to level 75. All these time got me around 25 levels of parrying. You can assume roughly 1 parrying per 1 level on Samurai, no I can’t capped Parrying before each level. I dinged to 225 when I got to Lv75 Samurai. They come in 0.5’s too, pretty sweet for a “DC” Lv75 mobs. Also, most of their WS are crap like eat your food, eat your TP. Pecking flurry is the best thing. A lot of times my parry skillups was gained when they use pecking flurry. I love Pecking xD! {Sweets}

Gear wise, I didn’t do anything specific. I was focus on killing the mobs so therefore, it was TP gear for TPing, WS for WSing. I am such a horrible PT Samurai because I soloed my way up to 75. I don’t even have macros for /thf until 75 rofl :D

I did gather statistics, but since I was switching mobs (Lesser Colibri till 64 then Colibri till 73) and mob level can range from EM to VT, the statistics I gathered was relatively useless unless I went to a bit more micro, such as recording the mob’s difficulty then sorting it out. But so many variable were changing, even evasion was chainging (it becomes uncapped at some point), so these stats were very hard to sort out. Therefore… I guess you got to take my words for it xD!

Skillup rate was roughly 0.57/hr, consistent.

ALTERNATIVELY: Which I didn’t do because I was leveling Samurai, Apparently Chigoes are good from 200 –> 220.

Screenshot of Shott, parrying on Rdm in Caedarva Mire. You can find them here. This looks like good skillups, but then I’ve gotten these before… some people are lucky like him, some aren’t and reported not a single skillup.

Alternative Route: Parrying 225 – 235

If you don’t like Colibri for whatever reason (don’t have xpac or what so ever), Flamingo at sky gives pretty decent skillups. I would say slightly better skillups.

It was for a change, but I find it very nice. The pros to this area is, if you solo its 90 exp, a party member would give nearly 81 exp, so you don’t loose too much at all for having a friend. Birds are easy to slice and takes roughly 1.5 horus to blow exp ring if you kill non-stop, not too shabby.

Skillup rate was roughly 0.43/hr, consistent.

Parrying 235 –> Parrying 25x

I tried a few ways to skillup parrying beyond 225. Pretty much 225 to 235 were my testing phase. Running around Vanadiel trying to find the best mob for parry skillup… I tried these…

• Tanking IT Colibri (those that are at new thickets)
  • Horrible, since I got good parry from Colibri, I thought Greater Colibri wouldn’t be that bad, but its very bad even with full tanking gear (ArHat Sets, Earth Staff etc…). Requires too much healing on each pecking flurry, hard to maintain the mp pool.
• Tanking Puck at Den of Rancor (which 99% of the people cap parrying with)
  • I tried it at 230, was still horrible imo, worst than my other choices, but I do plan to visit it again when I’m 259.
• Burning my Exp ring from Steelshell.
  • Probably the best idea, since not only you are getting exp, but skillups.

I picked Steelshell because it best suits my playing style. You can choose all others, but I prefer some exp due to Samurai. Anyway, I’ll discuss some of the ones I’ve tried below

Puck/G. Colibri Method

Pucks were horrible, I burn a stack of Taco again for a single parry skillup, (no not the level, a skillup) at 235 so I’m not going back there yet xD. Plus they hit hard >.> even with cure bomb method.

If you do this method, use the cure-bomb method. This means the person who needs to go parry “aggro” (you need to keep the claim yellow), pull it near the zone with the healer, and pull out your weapon on “ANOTHER” mob other than the Puck hitting you. That way your weapon is out but you arne’t hitting your yellow’s “aggro” mob. Your weapon should be aimed at some far monster such as the Tormentor so your weapon is out but impossible to hit since its “too far away”. If you have the distance plugin on Windower, keep an eye on it. It will auto-disengage when it goes out of 30 unit. So keep an eye.

With this method, your healer can heal all they want without worrying about aggro. You don’t even have to worry about voking :D

This is a very boring method, and I fell asleep a few times so ‘.’

The Colibri were such an MP sponge on each Pecking Flurry, a whm cannot sustain its MP so unless you have a RDM friend, I wouldn’t suggest doing it on G. Colibri.

Skillup rate was roughly 0.21/hr, very inconsistent.

The Steelshell Method

I tried both “tanking the mobs” and “killing the mobs” I’ll discuss them both below.

Tanking the Mob:

Basically I wear ArHat Gear, Dmg Reduction equipment, Earth staff. Priority in equipment would be Dmg Reduction > AGI > Parrying > All other gear.

My parring gear is pretty buy-able. Although I had spare mp if tanking 1 crab, but 2 crabs eats my Seigan/3rd Eye too fast so that was not feasible. Since evasion is capped, I’ve started collecting data (now that the Evasion Skill variable is a constant). Its debatable and also preferences, but this set of gear worked well for me.

Skillup rate was roughly 0.48/hr, consistent. (Tanking the mob, 235-256)

Killing the Mob:

I came up with the idea because tanking it 24/7 is pretty boring. I pretty much swap Earth Staff out for Hagen, ArHat out for Haubies and Optical Hat. Sometimes I tank, sometimes I DD. Anyhow, the setup is similar to the one below. (This is my TP gear, not really concerned with actually getting TP, more into just “doing some damage while having my weapon out”.

Nothing really special here. I wish I had Seiryu’s Kote and one more Breeze Ring (Yes damn Raindrop botting the damn AH for a month already). I can’t get my hands on a damn Wind Ore.

Skillup rate was roughly 0.53/hr, consistent. (Tanking the mob, 235-256)

Its a bit higher, but not statistically significant because this could be due to the variable of mobs that was spawned. Both methods are equally the same to me, but the DD one is more entertaining because you actually get some seals and experience points too.

Parrying 256- 269! The End of Parrying Journey!

I’ve posted it on another post.. you can find it HERE.

I’ve basically blast through that last few levels because its so close to my goal, so I wanted to get it over with.

So did Parrying help at all?

Tiny bit. I’m still surprised how its not a slanted curve though. Proc rate of parrying should exponentially increase while you get near to your mob’s level but apparently that’s not the case. I’m just surprised to find that its sort of a straight line myself. I’ve bee recording proc rate of parrying on steelshell since Lv235 so given that

1. Evasion were constant
2. Both Parrying and Evasion takes AGI as a modifier, plus it was only a small difference (or split second when I switch out parrying gear to WS)
3. I fight nearly 30 crabs a day (nearly 2hr tanking). That’s a lot of hit going towards me, so statistically, the sample size should be nice and big.

That these proc rate that was recorded were somewhat accurate. Not completely accurate like I said because I didn’t take down mob’s difficulty (very annoying on top of a boring job), but not completely inaccurate because I do fight a lot of crabs, and each crab takes a nice 5 minutes, the sample size should be big enough. Only variable is of those 30 crabs, some might be harder, some might be easier on some other day, which caused the fluctuations on the graph. But here it is…

Steady increase. Do take note the damn Y-axis starts at 14%!

Anyhow, I hope it was a good read for you. Yes I’m crazy, parrying skillup without a tank job, but I did it :) Gotta be a prepared panda for PvP ;)

Note: the above graph’s percentages is taken from the “RT Stats” real time parser that’s found in “UtsuWatch” plugin. I choose this over FFXIP or DVS Parse because those two still uses chat logs as a way to parse, whereas the UtsuWatch reads memory, so chances of error is nearly none. Also, all these parry sessions was “pure tanking”, for over 2hr+, so over 1,000 hits towards me on every session. The sample size extremely huge, and is within 5% margin of error.

Edit: You can read the rest of my parrying skillup (to cap) here.