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So what should someone do to level Shield Skill? Now I understand not holding on to an enitre area's mobs to prevent others from leveling, but would it be okay to do like 1/2 mobs?
No.
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I don't know where that one is in the rules.
It indeed is not in the rules.
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Is it the fact he was afk'ing? Holding too many mobs? or Holding any mobs at all?
Holding mobs without the intent to kill them so that other players cannot kill them is basically violating the rule stating that you can't limit other's gameplay activities.
I don't think anyone will accuse you, or will take action against you (talking nas here) if you went and held some random mob in some random zone that no one was actively trying to farm.
If you go to bubu and hold leeches on a beach until everyone else promises to leave and let you have the beach all to yourself? That was what the guy did. When people refused to leave, he decided he'd afk while holding them all. They were not doing it to level shield skill - they were doing it to make gil. But even if they were doing it to level shield, that would still break the rule.
The only mob that you are allowed to hold,
while other people are waiting on you, are HNMs, and only for a limited amount of time (stated in the rules), and only to alter spawn time.
Note the wording there. Knight Crabs? They aren't HNMs. You can't hold a Knight Crab. If you claim one, and there are people competing for KA claim with you, you better intend to be killing it rather quickly. You can't claim a Knight Crab and wait for someone to walk all the way over to Jugner to help you claim KA. This is a violation of the rules. Sure, if you're like, in KRT already, I don't think anyone would seriously mind if they had to wait a few minutes for someone to show up. But if they have to log on still? Run all the way from town? Nah. You're impeding other people's gameplay at that point and open yourself up to enforcement of the rules by nas.
Don't delay killing mobs at all while people are waiting for you to kill it. That's the easiest way to avoid getting hammer'd.
edit: Let's examine another case that I think would reveal some more of how this works.
A few months back, someone in a LS I'm in claimed VE and started fighting it. They weren't sure if they could solo it, but they tried. They said they'd likely need help once they claimed it, and I went out to the dunes when they said they were gonna die. I used the dunes OP, and they started kiting it. I quickly grabbed aggro when I got there and killed it for them. Someone accused us of "holding mobs" because of the kiting to stay alive. The player kiting put in their utmost effort to fight the mob and kill it, and only resorted to running away once they had no chance. They had been kiting for less time than it would have even taken them to run to a zone line.
The player
genuinely tried to kill VE. Inb4 "so what counts as trying": don't bother looking for specifics.