How To Train Your Faerie: A Comprehensive Guide

[Layla-chan]

Lol they're stupid, it makes some trials like Leviathan Ex much easier.

[giantslayer]

Just curious, in which fights would you prefer to have Eos (or any fairy) on Heel?

1. Fights with frequent knock back.
2. One specific part of T5. After divebombs, my group runs from that ditch to almost the other end of the battlefield for the snakes.

It is a small percentage of fights. Most it just doesn't make a lot of difference either way.

As far as use of macros goes, I use few or no macros for most classes. I'm usually looking to do one of three things with a macro:
1. Save hotbar space.
2. Improve efficiency with no or negligible trade offs (such as having rouse in my whispering dawn macro).
3. Fix things to operate the way I feel they should.

Most of my scholar macros fall under #3. Faeries don't queue your commands, which necessitates macros to ensure consistent execution of cooldown abilities. Faerie also waits until 80% to start healing the tank, which isn't as fast as I want. In order to manually command the faerie to start casting while the tank is above 80%, you have to have the tank targeted. If you want to DPS while the faerie heals, you have to target an enemy, which basically means a scholar has to have two separate targets at once, which is impossible. Then there is the whole thing where targeting an enemy triggers a self heal, which applies for faeries as well. Other classes don't need to have a healing target and an attack target simultaneously. These are all problems unique to the scholar class.

Then there is the issue of auto heal range only being 25y, so if you are healing someone towards your max range, your faerie will just stand there and watch you. That is the only reason I use heal+embrace macros. It could be useful as a space saver to avoid a dedicated embrace command or macro, which I might end up needing after the expansion.

[Sprilly20]

it really does make a world of difference when you actually take the time to pay a little attention to/ learn how to control your fairies. good job on this

[Miluiel]

Thank you for this guide! Always felt there is still enough to improve while healing with my faeries, these informations will help a lot. : )

[Maero]

Thank you so very much for the guide and also macros, i have had sch at 50 for a few months now but only now really getting into it and liking it
Hopefully FC people don't see me post this and ask me to heal endgame, haha
Also i am on PS4 as well, so the hotbar is very limited and therefore was thinking of using macros

[Lycinder]

Huh I'm surprised I actually knew some of this already (I thought I was a genius by fusing an eos and selene ability into a macro for the 3 of them), but that guard steady interrupt will help me a lot more than my current heel interrupt macro.

Good read and very helpful.

[Petite]

I've been playing WHM for 5 straight months and just now got myself a good book for my SCH (the rank 45 PvP one). These tips have helped me a lot in getting used to playing SCH and I'm very quickly getting the hang of it. It's fun.

I mainly play for PvP and there is so much going on during a flag fight, you don't always have time to focus on the specifics of your pet. I thus made a good macro for my Eos buffs. It will also work even if Eos is on the move. Just spam it every minute like when your AF refreshes and make sure you're near Eos as she casts her buffs.

/ac "Rouse"
/pac Steady
/pac Guard
/pac "Fey Illumination"
/wait
/pac Steady
/pac Guard
/pac "Whispering Dawn"
/wait
/pac Steady
/pac Guard
/pac "Fey Covenant"
/micon "Rouse"

[giantslayer]

/ac "Rouse"
/pac Steady
/pac Guard
/pac "Fey Illumination"
/wait
/pac Steady
/pac Guard
/pac "Whispering Dawn"
/wait
/pac Steady
/pac Guard
/pac "Fey Covenant"
/micon "Rouse"

I have two concerns/suggestions with that macro:
1. The 1 second wait may not be enough after whispering dawn. I would think it would need 2 or 3. Have you tested it outside combat?
2. If you spam that macro, you will cancel whispering dawn. You must be very disciplined to use this once while you are ready to use rouse and to let the macro run it's full course. You also have to not use other macros until it is done. This would be a good macro to use that /macrolock command Layla mentioned earlier in the thread.

[Grayve]

Thanks for this guide!

[Lovemonster]

1. Fights with frequent knock back.
2. One specific part of T5. After divebombs, my group runs from that ditch to almost the other end of the battlefield for the snakes.

It is a small percentage of fights. Most it just doesn't make a lot of difference either way.

As far as use of macros goes, I use few or no macros for most classes. I'm usually looking to do one of three things with a macro:
1. Save hotbar space.
2. Improve efficiency with no or negligible trade offs (such as having rouse in my whispering dawn macro).
3. Fix things to operate the way I feel they should.

Most of my scholar macros fall under #3. Faeries don't queue your commands, which necessitates macros to ensure consistent execution of cooldown abilities. Faerie also waits until 80% to start healing the tank, which isn't as fast as I want. In order to manually command the faerie to start casting while the tank is above 80%, you have to have the tank targeted. If you want to DPS while the faerie heals, you have to target an enemy, which basically means a scholar has to have two separate targets at once, which is impossible. Then there is the whole thing where targeting an enemy triggers a self heal, which applies for faeries as well. Other classes don't need to have a healing target and an attack target simultaneously. These are all problems unique to the scholar class.

Then there is the issue of auto heal range only being 25y, so if you are healing someone towards your max range, your faerie will just stand there and watch you. That is the only reason I use heal+embrace macros. It could be useful as a space saver to avoid a dedicated embrace command or macro, which I might end up needing after the expansion.

So basically, you're trying to reduce the amount of effort you have to put in while sacrificing versatility. I think this is the wrong way to approach scholar. If you play on a PC you can have so many keybinds and there are more than enough hotbars for them. If you do to shiva ex you'll see how often pets die because they are given no attention probably because they are placed in the middle and forgotten or given the heel command and so lag behind you and eat the aoe.

Using target of target and focus target macros reduce your versatility. For example in t7, how would you actually target the archer adds? You'd have to individually target them either by clicking/tabbing or using the enemy list. This trains your ability to quickly change targets and improves your reactive healing, reduces downtime searching for targets and raid awareness. I think it only brings more trouble to people who use these macros, especially when they use their skills and don't notice that nothing is being done because of an incorrect target (tanks don't always target the boss, for example).

I think macros decrease versatility and improvement and this overweighs the increased effort you have to put in.
1. you can achieve everything that a macro does by simply being a quickthinking player who has practiced healing enough to switch between targets rapidly and control both self and pet simultaneously
2. you have to compensate for macros failing or not applying to the situation at hand -> you have to do it manually
3. you start to think that anything that your macro cannot do is too much effort and not worth it

I'm not saying the being efficient is wrong or anything but it definitely isn't optimal and the difference really does show between the good and great scholars. I think that learning scholar by doing everything manually from the start is a better training approach than using macros that other people have made.