View source for Post:Defense Experience Updates - 3/13/2011 - 5:24:03

{{Post
|a=DR-DARTENIAN
|t=Defense Experience Updates
|d=3/13/2011 5:24:03 AM
|n=175
|f=Combat - Weapons and Armor (11) \ Game Master and Official Announcements (1)
|c=m
|p=Heyo!

A modification to how experience is distributed to {{PRel|Evasion skill|Evasion}}, {{PRel|Parry Ability skill|Parry}}, and {{PRel|Shield Usage skill|Shield}} is now live in Prime and Platinum. Please read the following carefully:

{{PRel|Experience}} will now be award to all skills you are stanced to use, regardless of whether or not that skill is actually contested. For this to occur, you must be stanced to use the skill, and you must be able to use the skill -- you will not learn shield or parry if you do not have a shield or parry item in a usable position.

This is a short-term fix only to address a long-standing issue where one defense being successful prevents or severely impacts the learning in others, requiring players to deliberately stance down or juggle stances in dangerous ways.

Please understand that without a full rewrite (which is in progress), there is only so much that can be done in this regard with our current {{PRel|Combat|combat}} system. These new tweaks will help spread the experience gain, but skills that are not actively contested (you evaded the entire attack, so shield and parry were not contested, for example) will generally not receive as much experience as they would have if they had been contested. It may still be in your better interest to swap stances around a little, but the need to stance down dramatically (especially in evasion) should not be as common or necessary.
}}