The Aegis Hikari Guide to a Better Scholar Gamepad/Only Edition

[Sigmakan]

Adding in ones that I've been using a lot:

/micon Aetherflow
/ac "Energy Drain" <tt>
/ac Aetherflow <me>

Ensures you aren't wasting a stack of Aetherflow

/ac "Fey Covenant" <me>
/ac "Fey Glow" <me>
/ac "Fey Light" <me>

With Eos up, this will just do Fey Covenant. With Selene, it will do Fey Glow if it isnt on CD. If it is on CD it will do Fey Light.

Really wish there was a way to /micon a pet action.

[Spider-Dan]

/macroicon "Physick"
/pac "Embrace" <t>
/ac "Physick" <t>

This will always cast both on who ever you have sub targeted.

Doesn't this resolve as Embrace on subtarget, Physick on primary target?

Adding in one that I've been using a lot:

/micon Aetherflow
/ac "Energy Drain" <tt>
/ac Aetherflow <me>

Ensures you aren't wasting a stack of Aetherflow

Bad idea. Unless you remember to specifically detarget any time you're between fights, you will unintentionally start battles during prep phase.

e.g. you're positioning in CT, you have MT targeted (and MT has enemy targeted), and you refresh your Aetherflow; congrats, you just started the fight

Really wish there was a way to /micon a pet action.

/micon "Embrace" pet

[Sigmakan]

Doesn't this resolve as Embrace on subtarget, Physick on primary target?


Bad idea. Unless you remember to specifically detarget any time you're between fights, you will unintentionally start battles during prep phase.

e.g. you're positioning in CT, you have MT targeted (and MT has enemy targeted), and you refresh your Aetherflow; congrats, you just started the fight


/micon "Embrace" pet

I see your point about accidentally starting fights, but hasnt happened yet, and I'm getting great use out of this macro. (That being said, Im sure next time I play SCH I'll make this mistake)

Ok, I feel kinda dumb for not knowing "/micon "Embrace" pet". Thanks!

[fencedin]

Doesn't this resolve as Embrace on subtarget, Physick on primary target?

No. It works as I said.

[Manuka]

I was actually putting together my own scholar gamepad guide to post, but seeing yours I'll just attach mine here and you can pick out the useful bits. So here it goes

First off, prepping your configurations; First follow Aegis' advice by turning off auto-sheathe and disable pet hotbar. But for my setup take five crosshotbars (two for each fairy and one for R1>L2/ L2>R1) and also two hot bars of your choosing (these will be used to show CD's and I'll explain later why you need two) and turn off sharing. Also as a QoL but not necessary change, go to system config> gamepad settings > button config and switch the L/R1 buttons with L2/R2. I find holding the top buttons waaay more comfortable than the bumpers for skills.

First Up, Your Primary Bar(s)

How I have mine set up is that all primary healing skills are situated on the R button while fairy specific skills are on the left (ignore the non-class specific macroicons for now, I'll discuss'em in the macro section along with why i have two chotbars). I personally do not macro physick with embrace as I find there are many situations where you need to heal multiple targets and you will want to split up the heals (there's also a second reason that I'll explain in macro section). So what I did is place Embrace on square and physick on X. With this you can lay your thumb across both buttons for single-target heals without binding'em together. Also, I made sure to place all insta-cast skills (SS and Lustrate) on the buttons and timed-casts on the directional pad, as you can't really use the analog when clicking directional pad skills.

Second Up, Your Combat Bar(s)

This is where me and Aegis' guides split up, command-wise atleast. As a scholar my job is primarily to mitigate damage and to do so I require seeing the target's action bar and see what attacks are coming. The only means of doing this is either target the monster (i don't advise it) or focus target(which is what I use). But thanks to the <f> command we can utilize that focus target to a higher degree than just seeing abilities. Coming off as a Whm main my primary means of attack were simply <t> and <tt> macros. However as sch I learned pretty quickly that those can screw us over if a tank is tabing (nothing is worse than casting BioII/Miasma than having the tank switch targets just as you follow up with Bio an Bane, feels bad man). So instead I use <f> to stack DoTs onto one target while still keeping my targeting marker on party members for leeches, directing Embrace (which I have tied to all offense skills) and throw out emergency lustrates if something suddenly goes wrong.
That said, you're probably curious what the hell Holy and Disembowel are doing there, they are both BioII but each has a different set of commands that I use depending on the situation. The Disembowel is a standard /focustarget <tt> that will be your go-to rotation starter for the majority of party content as it sets the ft to whatever the tank is targetting. The Holy is a macro I created to deal with annoyances created by the /focustarget macro. There are times where you do not want to focus the tanks target, such as when adds spawn, but the tank must remain on that target (think ifrit's nails). This macro opens with /tenemy, cast's BioII, sets ft then is followed by /ta <me> and finishes by casting embrace. This is best used for solo pve content and the few times boss mechanics force you to shift targets. Honestly this is my fav macro cause just seeing the targeting fly everywheres applying ft, BioII and embrace within a second just leaves me giddy.
Now you're probably curious why there's a third BioII, basically it's to avoid mucking with the focus target while keeping to your rotation and to keep all your primary actions bundled together on the same side. Which reminds me, if you intend to make your own layout, try to keep all your most used skills on one side so you're holding R 90% of the time. I find this is 'mentally' easier to organize and you decrease the rate you flub an hit wrong a skill when switchin between sides.

Lastly, Your Quick Access Bar

How I have the bar set up is that pressing R1>L1 will bring up access to all your CD's and the Obey Macro (Spur icon). This ties into my earlier statement about keeping all your primary actions on the right. This way when you need that CD you aren't scrambling between submenus when you're caught up in the moment, a simple L1 tap an you're there. While on the left side you got your biggy skills and battle prep stuff, things you wont need at hand most of the time (also can put potions and food in there).

Some final words; you can remove sprint and place it in the quick access bar and in its stead place energy drain on the healer bars and bane on the dps bars. I just find having the Sprint always there more comfortable with its low CD and to be honest, it is probably the most op ability a mage caster has so I want it on hand at all times. Cause consider that a lotta content uses dodge mechanics designed with basic run in mind, having sprint always there makes survival easy even if you suffer the "move-a-mile-an-still-hit" syndrome.

MACROS

Probably the section you're most curious about since I utilize a LOT of macros (29 total). Most of'em are basic abilities tied with embrace, but I created a few macro's that make fairy skills significantly more smoother after I got annoyed with how clunky they are and unable to find any guides, pc or gamepad, to deal with it.

Healing and General Macros

For healing skills I actually don't tie embrace to many of them, with the exception of Succor and Adloquium. I find Lustrate and Leeches too short to bother adding Embrace as often my fairy is already casting from a previous input or I'm already back to mashing Physick/ Embrace. I also use the Rez macro in the OP.

Eos (Selene) Summon
/micon "Summon (II)"
/chotbar change 1 (3)
/hotbar display 5 off (on)
/hotbar display 6 on (off)
/ac "Swiftcast" <me>
/ac "Summon (II)" <me>
/wait 2
/tenemy
/pac "Obey" <t>
/tlt
/wait
/pac "Heel" <me>

This is your summon macro (just swap the numbers in parenthesis for Selene's version). This is also the reason for the duplicate hotbars and chotbars. The first three lines shift your chotbar to the appropriate fairy set as well as enabling the CD hotbar for that fairy while disabling the hotbar for the other. You can notice this in the above pictures where the CD bar has different fairy skills depending on who's out. If you're playin on ps3 I don't believe you can display hotbars, but it's fine as my layout you still have visual access to the fairy skills and you can tap L1 for the rest.

Obey and Destroy (Spur Icon)
/tenemy
/pac Obey <t>
/tlt
/wait
/pac Heel <me>

This is just an amended version of your Obey macro that not only applies obey but shifts your target back to whatever it was on (ie. tank). Also you really don't need to use steady anymore since this patch steady and guard function pretty much the same now.

1-800-FAIRY (Presence of Mind Icon)
/pac "Place" <me>
/pac "Heel" <me>

This is a simple but effective macro I created for fairy movement while saving you a spot. I found this out by mistake, but place operates independent of the other 'instant' actions like stay, obey and place, instead behaving more like the targeting system meaning that you can queue these skills together to gain both actions (you'll get the place reticle while your fairy rushes towards you). I find this more comfortable on the controller since fairy movement is pretty stiff you can usually confirm the new placement before your fairy turns around, not to mention I often mix the buttons up cause they look alike lol. Just remember though, Heel has to come after place. If you put it before the Heel it will cancel out the action.

Cleric Stance (X4)
Eos
/macroicon "Cleric Stance"
/ac "Cleric Stance" <me>
/chotbar change 2 (1)
Selene
/macroicon "Cleric Stance"
/ac "Cleric Stance" <me>
/chotbar change 4 (3)

You couldn't have noticed but all four cleric stances are actually seperate macros that instantly swap the chotbar between healer an dps for the appropriate fairy. This is totally optional as you may prefer swapping manually, it's just I have a serious aversion to R2 chotbar swapping as I find the lag when switching really upsets my flow. Also you can put a /wait in-between the /ac and /chotbar if you wish to have a delay, because I know cleric stance can be finicky for some people and you have to click it multiple times. With the /wait it won't switch until you stop pressing, fixing that issue.

Focus Target (Hawk's Eye Icon)
/focustarget

Pretty simple, I rarely use it but for those times where you dont want to target the tanks target and don't want to rely on the /tenemy to determine your target.

DPS Macros

Half of these are pretty straight forward so to save space I'll condense the 'look-a-like' macros together.

Guided (Disembowel Icon)
/focustarget <tt>
/ac "Bio II" <f>
/ac "Bio II" <t>
/pac "Embrace" <t>

Aim (Holy Icon)
/tenemy
/ac "Bio II" <t>
/focustarget <t>
/ta <me>
/pac "Embrace" <t>

These are my primary targeting skills that I open with when switching to cleric stance depending on the situation as I said above. I should mention that you can replace the /ta <me> line with /tlt for party content if you want, but you should keep the former line as this is your primary opener for solo content.

BioII, Miasma I, Bio, RuinII
/macroicon "____"
/ac "___" <f>
/ac "___" <t>
/pac "Embrace" <t>

Bane, Energy Drain
/macroicon "____"
/ac "____" <f>
/ac "____" <t>

Pretty self-explanatory, just fill in the blanks with the appropriate skill.

Ruin/ Aero
/macroicon "Ruin"
/ac "Ruin" <f>
/ac "Ruin" <t>
/wait 2.5
/ac "Aero" <f>
/ac "Aero" <t>
/pac "Embrace" <t>

Basically I ran outta room for Aero lol So I bounded it to Ruin. If you need it just let it cast and aero should follow almost immediately. If you don't, just mash the sucker an you'll never see it.

Pet Action Macros

Fairy Prayer (Tri Disaster Icon)
/ac "Rouse" <me>
/ac "Swiftcast" <me>
/ac "Succor" <me>
/pac "Fey Illumination" <me>
/pac "Whispering Dawn" <me>
/wait
/pac "Fey Illumination" <me>
/pac "Whispering Dawn" <me>
/wait
/pac "Whispering Dawn" <me>

This is just an amended version of Op's AoE heal with swiftcast thrown in, because why the hell not if you're popping that many CD's it's for primarily a scripted mechanic that hits the whole party hard. The swiftcast will (almost) insure that galvinize is on long enough to block, since there is a noticeable delay between when galvinize applies and actually begins blocking damage. Also, the reason for the /wait's is primarily insurance. I'm pretty dam sure the fairy is actually server-side which is why it takes a while for fairy skills to kick in when you clickem as the delay is the time it takes for you to send an receive data from the server. This also means that if you're using a mash'ro it's possible for a small hiccup in connection to cause the skills to perform out-of-order (casting whispering dawn first, then fey illumination) which is pretty disastrous for a macro like this. The /wait will insure that if you do get a hiccup the command will follow as designated by the /wait's until the connection normalizes.

Eos Commands

Whispering Dawn
/macroicon "Whispering Dawn" pet
/ac "Rouse" <me>
/pac "Stay" <me>
/wait
/pac "Whispering Dawn" <me>

Fey Covenant
/macroicon "Fey Covenant" pet
/pac "Stay" <me>
/wait
/pac "Fey Covenant" <me>

Fey Illumination
/macroicon "Fey Illumination" pet
/pac "Stay" <me>
/wait
/pac "Fey Illumination" <me>

Selene Commands

Silent Dusk
/macroicon "Silent Dusk" pet
/pac "Obey" <f>
/wait
/pac "Silent Dusk" <f>
/pac "Silent Dusk" <t>

Fey Glow
/macroicon "Fey Glow" pet
/pac "Stay" <me>
/wait
/pac "Fey Glow" <me>

Fey Light
/macroicon "Fey Light" pet
/pac "Stay" <me>
/wait
/pac "Fey Light" <me>

*Fey Fairy
/macroicon "Fey Glow" pet
/pac "Stay" <me>
/wait
/pac "Fey Glow" <me>
/pac "Fey Light" <me>

*This is the Fey Glow icon in the Selene DPS bar. Due to space I couldnt fit both but considering you'll never be in dps mode longer than 30secs if one runs out while in cleric stance just pop the button an it'll cast whichever is off CD.

These are the macro's I created that I mentioned back in the Macro intro. As I'm sure most of you know Eos an Selene will not cast any of their other skills while casting embrace. What this means is that most of us have to mash the button over an over waitin on her slow ass to finish casting. I searched everywhere for ways to avoid this but came up with nothing, so I did some experimenting on my own. I discovered that pet movement actions and stances (heel, guard, steady, obey, place after confirming) will prematurely break embrace (an strangely Embrace continues along it's normal GCD). Unfortunately all the most oft used commands would be more detrimental as they make her move around which adds time. But then I remembered about that skill all of us dropped an forgot because of how useless it is, Stay. By using that command in a macro all her skills will consistently cast when clicked once within a second. This is mostly QoL for the fairy skills but I bolded Silent Dusk specifically because this macro actually makes it usable. You probably noticed that any time a monster begins casting something and you try to use it Selene is, 9 times outta 10, casting Embrace. Meaning by the time you wait for the 1-2 secs for embrace to finish plus the <1 sec it takes to activate the skill the monster has pretty much casted it. With this macro you can consistently use Silent Dusk to decent effect, just pretend it has a 1sec cast time. ;p It's not the greatest fix but its a hell lot more effective than using it in its current state.
Also I had to swap Stay with Obey in the Silent Dusk macro, as apparently there's a bug where you cannot cast silent dusk when in stay, period. I even tried this with just the skills an no macro, silent dusk is just not clickable when you put Selene in stay. I'm thinking I should submit this to bug section but whatever~


Whelp, I think that's actually about it! Man this took forever to type out so please forgive any grammatical errors lol Hope it is of some use to you guys.

[Kyata]

Nice guide, thanks for the tips
I was just starting to mess around with my SCH macros myself. Since I was only using it for dungeons from time to time, I didn't bother micro managing a lot. So I'll definitely be borrowing some of your macros

One thing I'd like to comment on, though. I don't agree with having the low priority/infrequent skills on the L2+R2/R2+L2 bars. Those are undoubtedly extremely fast to access, and completely eliminate having to touch the R1 button in most cases.
I would suggest the LB, protect, infrequent pet commands to be on Set 3 (R1+X), with the L2+R2 accessing Set 2 (R1+O), which would have all the offensive skills.

Of course it's best to use whatever you get comfortable with, just voicing my opinion on the matter

[Tourist]

Thank you all very much for the guide and all the following input. Scholar always looked interesting, but the pet management system felt so cumbersome with a controller to me, so i went white mage instead. I found this guide yesterday and after borrowing a few of the macros in here, i found that I rather enjoyed the scholar.

[Daenerys_Sedai]

No. It works as I said.

True. I think it's because both /ac and /pac are executed simultaneously, the single target physick <t> + embrace <t> macro works as intended.

However, there are some strange things I've tried with party announcements. For example:

Say you're focused on Tank (player 2) and you want to raiser a DPS (player 5). The macro:

/ac "Raise" <t>
/p [Casting Spell] [Raise] on <t>

Will resolve to: Raising player 5 but appear in chat as :"[Casting Spell] [Raise] on Tank"

I thought I could resolve this by
/ac "Raise" <t>
/p Casting Spell Raise on <lt>

but that doesn't seem to work as consistently.

After realizing the derpiness, I just went:
/p Casting Spell Raise on <t>
/ac "Raise" <t>

That worked as intended. But the errors did provide some insight on the macro system.

[AldoVonAlexandros]

i appreciate you taking the time to write this. i just want to quickly caution against macroing embrace to your own heals. i see this suggested often and while it has its uses i think it's better and safer to simply embrace manually. i say this because if your embrace is tied to your adlo, or your physick, that commits your fairy to healing your target. sometimes you'll want to continue healing the tank...

well eos is so great that sometimes she focuses a low player hp before she obeys me xD, and belive me, a quick lustrate saves the day or use my macro in order to Eos use embrace on that target then cancel my heal to focus tank, interrupting my psy wont interrupt eos

well all of this i have already done it before this guide, but at the end each player its going to do their own configuration, i have done so many test with my pad and its so diferent from yours and my fingers are already use to it, its a great guide you have told everything

[ColdestHeaven]

I am probably going to regret making some of those macros (I am one of those guys who screw up bad after messing around with settings), but it's a good guide nonetheless. Even if I'm playing on PC and will never choose a pad over a keyboard, thank you for sharing these tips!