Everyone says a buffed up muter out-tanks people, but I get hit by unarmed easy kill mobs basically every swing while wielding a staff. At this point I get maybe 4-5 rounds against a mob before needing to rest. At this pace it's entirely not worth continuing.

Here's the question. Say you're in the 40+ range and your parry and weapon skills are pretty much at 75%. Do you just delete? I'm coming over to the camp that says that you must max your skills at low levels or you're in for dozens of hours of practice later. I always thought the game really couldn't be that poorly designed, but I dunno, I'm thinking maybe it is.

So how do you master defenses in less than say, 2-3 hours as the above character? Oh yeah, and no a/b/s, slave healer, infinite gold, or other unreasonable things.

It's not that hard to practice your skills as a muter, you just have to know where to do it. And it takes a while so have patience. It is good to do it early on while you can be hasted and wearing a healing ring while it is still decent healing. But it can easily be done later down the road. One MUST is take the Grace under pressure edge, and master of self edge, those two will make your defenses a lot better. I found a mob that could barely hurt me in an out of the way area, made sure my weapon could hurt it, and spent a few hours doing it.

But I doubt IMMs allow me to write it here. So just ask IC

The new commands

'skill learn parry'

and

'skill learn staff'

are your best friend. Aside from spellcraft and arguably metabolic unity you really don't have any other skills to practice that desperately so increase them as you level.

With a recent muter I had parry at 96% and staff at 95% pretty much from very occaisional use and just advancements as I levelled by level 40. Never cared much about whip or dagger myself so those are still in the low 80's though.

Now if you're already level 40 and your parry and staff are at 75%? Yeah, it's going to be a long, slow slog. Put up desensitize, arcane absorbption, corporeal hardening for damage reduction, find some easy mobs that don't do anything fancy, and bring a good book. A practice staff might not hurt, either.

And I never stopped to practice them. I just slapped on skill learn for a bit.

There are mobs you can safely practice defenses on even at hero.

>So how do you master defenses in less than say, 2-3 hours as
>the above character? Oh yeah, and no a/b/s, slave healer,
>infinite gold, or other unreasonable things.

You don't. You also probably can't do it at low levels with the same character with the restrictions you lay out at low levels either.

>You don't. You also probably can't do it at low levels with
>the same character with the restrictions you lay out at low
>levels either.

Alright so how many hours should it take? Do you think there's a big difference between whether you do it at 19 or 49?

When I master defences, I do it at 15. As a warrior/assassin/ranger..depending on race 3-4hrs by lvl 25 I have all my weapons 100% or very close to...Would be very painful to do on a mage......

It is to do that. There are only 4 times I bother to actually practice defenses and NEVER weapons.

For defenses at level 1 for fighting races I take 10 mins to get them to 80 then I am gone. As I get new defensive skills I just let them go up naturally. They will max or be in the 90's by the 30's and I rank fast and rarely solo.

I will practice defenses at all after 1st is when I can't find a group or I'm too distracted to group. That's just the logical and most efficent use of time in a MPRPG.

The other two times are to quickly spam up wilderness familiarity or. Shield block to get shield mastery.

When some one tells me they are soloing to 20 or busy mastering whip, I get dizzy from the lameness.

Grouping is your friend when it comes to learning weapons annnnnd defense!

I agree that it seems completely unnecessary spam practicing weapons. It also seems equally lame.

However, I feel like there is a difference in how well you defend if you know the weapon you're defending against better. 90's in most weapons satisfies this theory for me.

I've also theorized that how well you know a weapon determines how easily you can disarm it.

For a melee class, those are two really good reasons to spam practice weapons at least some.

I agree with both, but the first is actually spelt out in the parry helpfile!

But you're right, it is clearly spelled out.

>I've also theorized that how well you know a weapon determines
>how easily you can disarm it.

This is true; however (and this is also true with parry), you get almost all of the benefit just by spending the practices on the weapons. (That is, having the weapon at something like 75% instead of 0% or 1% gives you most of the benefit.)

...sometimes one successful parry (especially against villager berserkers) or one landed disarm will win a fight.

But yeah, unless I'm playing a sword spec, I really really don't care how high my weapons skills/parry is (other than, as D said, getting them to around 75%).

I wish I knew that trick!

.

Which also perfects defenses.

However, it is:
a) Still hours of tedium,
b) Requires the use of certain mobs (about a dozen of them), which in turn requires an area and all surrounding areas to be completely deserted (which isn't that common).
c) Requires you to lead the mobs a long way, since where they come from is not safe to spam.
d) Requires you to redirect from mob to mob very freqently so that you don't accidentally kill them, which is also a pain in the butt.

Hence I don't bother with it.

>a) Still hours of tedium,

In that case it probably wouldn't be the 3 hours to every weapon over 90% that the great-grandparent or whatever poster claims.