Be vigilant...

... guard your mind against negative thoughts." - Buddha

This weekend was a Guard skill-up extravaganza! I'm really trying to keep a positive mind on skilling-up my guard because I KNOW it will be beneficial in the long-run for me. Especially during Salvage runs.

I started off by spending some time getting my PUP from 40 up to 42 and constantly seeing my Guard skill-up as I went along. Obviously I can only do this while tanking, which meant I had to solo again, but it was fun. I even started toying around with various heads and bodies on my automaton and finally started skilling up Lobo's ranged skill... although I doubt I will ever really cap this because it just doesn't seem all that useful. He'll probably always just be my back-up mage while I solo. But once my Guard hit about 94 (?) I decided to head back to SSG as MNK/RDM and see if my Guard started proc-ing more. And whaddayaknow?! It DID! :-D

Well, actually, I spent some time running around to various zones and trying different mobs before heading back down to SSG. (Davoi, etc...) Lower-level mobs (my guard skill / 3 = mob level) will get a better guard proc rate. Unfortunately, mobs in the 30's basically cannot hit me due to my high Evasion, and when they COULD get a swing through, I would counter it basically every time.

So I decided to head back down to SSG and use the same tactics I had used before. Now that I had GREATLY increased my Enhancing magic skill, hopefully my Phalanx and Stoneskin would be a little more effective too. (and yes, they were.) I think a set of Sahagins (typically 3 Marsh/MNKs at a time; I'd get a Bog/DRG every now-and-then when I couldn't find 3 MNKs, but the DRGs tend to hit me for a lot more, so I'd always end up deliberately killing them before my counters took them out.) would typically last around 20 - 30 minutes. In general, I got about 1.0 skillups per hour. There was a stretch where I was getting about 2.0 skillups per hour, but I decided to log off at that time because someone was running through killing everything in site, which meant I couldn't "target something in the distance" and make my mobs last longer.

My Guard skill is currently sitting at 135, which makes me feel pretty good. I'm still getting the majority of my skillups anywhere from 0.3 to 0.5 so I figure I can stick around SSG to do this for still quite a while before needing to find somewhere else to go.

Since this skillup procedure is pretty boring (I could engage and then walk away from my computer for 5 minutes at a time without the slightest worry of dying) I ended up watching a lot of tv (SciFi had a Land of the Lost (from the mid 1970's) marathon) and doing more reading up on some randomness. While surfing around, I found someone else's tips on how they got their Guard skill capped.
Funbard's Guarding Gear Sets: http://funbard.livejournal.com/20898.html
Funbard's Guard Camp Summary: http://funbard.livejournal.com/16613.html#cutid1

Unfortunately for me, his camps don't start until around guard level 160, but I guess I can start looking at those once I level up a little more. Hopefully I'll be up around that range by the end of this coming weekend.


In other news:
Our sky LS has been fairly uneventful due to the holiday weekend, but hopefully people will be back online and up in sky tonight.

Nomar gave the bank that he was holding to Lilmama and she started handing out payments. She also started giving out payments frmo last week's runs too. It was only about a 3.4 million gil bank, but only 6 of us asked for it, so we're still getting a nice payout.

Shiiga mentioned that she and Zal are finally moved in together and will probably be back online by this coming weekend.

Hopefully with all of this good news, people will begin to start spamming sky again and we can start using up all of these Kirin sets that we are sitting on.

In closing: life is good. I'm still leveling and therefore making slow progress on the AH rankings. (Yeah Pimpsterer, I'm ahead of you again! haha!) My guard skill-up is proceeding as planned (although, a little slower than I had initially expected). The weather is nice. The Cavs have been playing well. And I am in good health. Game on!