Parry skillup guide

CAUTION!

This article is only a guide. Information expressed in a guide is usually more opinion than fact and should be taken as such. Guides are written by players, based upon their experiences, successes and mistakes, and are meant to aid other players. However, there may be differing opinions than those expressed in a guide. Strategies and information in guides may not work for everyone.

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Welcome to a guide on how to skill up parry, or as I call it: "How I learned to stop caring and getting all blue for combat skills."

This guide seeks to help others in skilling up Parry in the least painful way. To start with, lets review when parry kicks in:

Evasion > Parry > Shadows > Counter > Block

As you can see, it extends out shadows and can diminish taking damage. NIN, SAM and THF (and COR) have, which caps at 269. It then drops to 225-200 for everyone else.

To parry, your weapon must be drawn while facing the enemy (within a ~60 degree angle).

Powerleveling Parry

Most people would tradionally advise going and soloing mobs to a point, but you'll have to rest at some point. This guide seeks to eliminate that and take advantage of some mechanics to actively speed up the process.

In theory almost any 75 job can do this method, although BRD, PLD and RDM have bonuses for them. However, there are some caveats to this method: A 75 job with a RDM subjob to 37, capped at 109, and a method of MP/HP restoration (Weaponskill/Auto Refresh/Ballad/Etcetera) will have a much easier time powerleveling Parry.

Physical Damage Taken (PDT) reduced to zero

To start with, damage calculation goes:

Defense÷Crit > Physical Damage Taken (PDT) > Phalanx

This may not mean much at first glance, but PDT is a percent reduction and stacking it will cause damage taken to drop fast. Example: An Earth Staff -20% PDT reduces a 100 damage hit to 80. So if we get high Defense and enough PDT we can lower damage a lot.

Using common PDT gear, such as the Darksteel Harness +1 Set (-13% PDT), Earth Staff (-20% PDT) and Jelly Ring (-5% PDT), Svatta Ring (-5% PDT) and Cheviot Cape (-5% PDT)), you can attain -48% PDT, just two percentage points short of the cap.

The closer you can stack PDT up to the -50% PDT cap, the better. Even only the set and staff together already adds up to -33% PDT.

For a full list of equipment that affects Physical Damage Taken (PDT), see here.

Phalanx

Then we add Phalanx. The short versiom is "Damage reduction = Floor(Enhancing Magic Skill/10) - 2". Base ---/RDM (75/37) Enhancing Magic is capped at 109. Meanining that Phalanx results in a flat -8 Damage Reduction. If you equip an Enhancing Torque its -9.

Optimal Route

To maximIze skill-ups, as well as to reduce damage, we want to target MNK-type mobs. Which leaves us with two choices: Mandys or Beastmen.

This is the approximate map I used:

Bubu Mandy - 15
Beastmen MNK - 21 (Yagudo Votary at Giddeus/Castle Oztroja)
Jungle Mandy - 35
Purongo isle mandy - 37
Beastmen MNK - 42 (Yagudo Zealot at Castle Oztroja)
Beastmen MNK - 47 (Yagudo Zealot / Orcish Gladiator / Spinel Quadav at Castle Zvahl)
Sea Serpent Grotto - 52 (Marsh Sahagin at Sea Serpent Grotto (Mythril door))
Tree- mandy lower level - 62
Beastman MNK - 64/66 
Tree- mandy upper level - 72 through 75

Tips & Tricks

So the trick to fast skill ups is to ideally get the mobs to hit 0 damage which up to level 37 is very easy. At 47 I could mostly produce 0s using DEF food and -38% PDT and -10 from Phalanx as a BRD, while facing off against 7 MNK Beastmen.

I'd first test incoming damage by pulling one mob to see what the damage is like, then incrase the number of monsters to as many as you can engage and fit together, keeping the 60 degrees parrying arc in mind. We just turn it into a numbers game of them throwing out weak hits, waiting for skill-ups to roll in. Super easy up until 50s to refresh Phalanx before it wears off without interruption, so you just have to worry about how you will regain MP.

At 50s against 62 mandys I started to take hits for about 8 - 12 damage each. Which made pulling multiple mobs riskier and harder to time Phalanx recasts as a BRD/RDM. I stuck to two mobs at a time from then on and if worst happened: Lullaby to recast Phalanx, use Paeon to regen HP back and equip Spirit Taker to restore MP. RDM or PLD should be able to push this to -22 dmg phalanx which at this level range should reduce incoming damag to almost 0 damage.

The whole experience can be summerized as such: Get net damage to 0 (using DEF food, PDT, Phalanx and HP Regen) and have a way to restore MP for Phalanx.