I am curious if there is any reason to put more than one point into advanced guard stance. I don't fully understand how the skill is applied on a perfect guard, but if it is refreshed every time you perfect guard something, spending 4 extra points to get 20 seconds on an already fairly long buff doesn't seem like a good investment.

It honestly is a personal preference if you want to put those points elsewhere beyond the first. Getting it to 5 SP is basically just giving yourself insurance for situations where you might not get to do a Perfect Guard that often, like in MPAs where things melt in seconds.

Interesting tidbit, the length of time was actually increased from what it was previously: 20 seconds at 1 SP and 40 seconds at 5 SP (and originally it was 5 seconds for 1 SP and 10 seconds for 5 SP); so basically, just putting 1 SP into it now is the same as 5 SP before the Episode 6 balancing (which the NA/Global version uses).

@AndrlCh Thank you for the reply (and the tidbit), I'll probably just stick to one point then. If things are melting in MPAs then there really isn't a point to me trying to maintain a 50% damage buff. If a boss shows up, I can just go stand in an attack and then continue from that point.

Also something I forgot to note: getting a Perfect Guard via Charged Parry can also activate Advanced Guard Stance.

@AndrlCh Thank you very much for coming back to tell me, that's very thoughtful of you. I knew about this, and make liberal usage of it. It's also great because the charge parry window is pretty big.

@Vilrein It was also mostly so that if anyone ever comes across this thread with the same question, it is helpful to have as much info as possible.

Plus, it hadn't clicked for me that it did for some reason (probably since I'm more used to just making a Fury Critical build), and now I have to go and rebuild my Global Hu/Su and JPN Hu/Et.

@AndrlCh Fair enough. Hopefully you don't have to nuke all your current builds to reset them.

@Vilrein I have a nice stack of All Skill Tree resets on both servers, so it's no big deal.