Any other scholars on O4S?

I'm looking for some tips, my group just got to this last night and it's a doozy.

Seems to be a ridiculous amount of stuff that I need to heal while moving, especially. I don't know how to go about it...I can only Indom so often. How are other scholars handling it?

My group thinks I should just finish leveling astrologian for lightspeed and things but I don't want to have to resort to that if I can make a work around.

I'm going to assume you're running with a WHM and you're still on Exdeath?

Mechanics here are either entirely ignorable or hurt like hell, there's no in between. The key is to figure out what cooldowns work best for you at various points and thus staggering them accordingly. If you're able to record yourself, do so for a run or two as being able to replay your own gameplay makes planning CDs a lot easier.

If you haven't spotted it already, surecast is absolute gold here and works a treat on vacuum wave. Initially it may pay dividends to ask your PLD to cover the WHM to make their life a little easier topping up people before the first Black Hole though, but eventually you'll be wanting to use that cover on a DPS.

A tip that might help dramatically is for The Decisive Battle. Rather than running from the stack point directly to your flare position, instead run in the relevant direction to either side of the Tree's face and hard cast a succor, then move into your flare position. If your WHM is doing the same thing that'll give you a much more substantial HP buffer for a Fire III potentially freeing up indom/swiftcast for use elsewhere.

After Decisive Battle > Flares, always assume that Exdeath is going to cast Thunder III and position yourself with plenty of room to get out of the way, it makes Fire III a little bit tighter to deal but that's preferable to frequent and frustrating deaths (Not to mention the tip above should buy you the breathing space you need for this).

Another useful tip if you're having issues with not quite topping people for White Hole, set the HP bars over player's heads to only be visible when they are not at full HP, this gives a much clearer indication that someone might be down 100hp or so that you'd likely miss on the party frame.

Black Holes are the roughest portion of Exdeath imo, and as such, here's a few pointers specific to that mechanic:

Try and have a couple of good cooldowns handy for Black Holes, as WHM I precast Largesse+Medica II, have Asylum down and keep Assize to use between the healer+tank Fire and the stack marker exploding. As SCH I'd be looking at precasting Rouse+WD+Succor for the Black Hole cast as well as pocketing Indom for the stack. It's also worth noting that the tank will usually take a battering in the auto attacks leading up to Black Hole, throwing an Adlo or such here is generally worthwhile if you can afford it.

Try to get all 4 tethers moving in the same direction around the edge of the arena for the first set, bumping into others with those BHs in tow isn't fun. If you get caught up behind someone else's Hole and you've got the stack marker, you're effectively dead. Having everyone trying to move either clockwise or anti clockwise stops this being an issue and will save you having to endure a lot of needless wipes.

For the second set with the flares, this is a bit trickier, I've found it easiest to simply run around the arena as a pack and fan out accordingly as soon as our flare markers pop. This one will take a little time to get used to tho as it's pretty daunting at first.

Lastly, mitigation is king, your WHM is far more suited to refilling those HP bars quickly, rather you need to ensure bubbles are up when they are needed to make the WHM's life easier. At this point you'll likely need to contribute a fair amount of DPS to beat the enrage so don't be afraid to lean on your WHM's HPS. If in doubt, communicate, plan and test.

Good luck! It's one heck of a fight and quite the shock to the system compared to Creator ;)

I completed both exfaust and neo as AST/SCH.
The Scholar always let swiftcast for the knock back from decisive battle. Pre cast Succor with Whispering Down for black holes, indomitability every white hole and deploy for meteor. You also can prevent the knock back from vacuum wave by using surecast. It's not that hard, just needs practice ^~^

If you have a BRD (Which you probably do) I suggest you communicate with them and get them to 'Nature's Minne' on your Deploy target before you Adlo for meteor - it will buff it by 20%, if you crit it will give insane numbers.

I have played both AST and SCH for O4S. I actually prefer playing SCH for O4S, but that is probably because I like SCH more.

Exdeath Part 1: You just DPS a lot for the most part.

Now for healing...
- White Hole: save Indom for this mechanic. Can Emergency Tactics + Succor if your co-healer needs more help for some reason.
- Decisive Battle + Holy: Rouse + Whispering Dawn (WD), time Succor to land for knockback, Swiftcast + Succor while running.
- Flare: Emergency Tactics + Succor before Blizzard/Fire/Thunder attack, some ticks of WD
- Vacuum Wave: Largesse + Succor...can Surecast the hit, but I take Cleric Stance instead and sprint back
- Black Hole: Rouse + Whispering Dawn + Succor
- Holy after Black Hole: Indom
- Meteor: Deploy an Adlo, alternatively use Sacred Soil + Succor if on CD.


WHM is just DPS and Regen the tank. I do not know too much about WHM for this fight so I imagine it is something like this.

Benediction for every Holmgang. Benediction Living Dead on DRK if you have DRK. Asylum the DPS/tanks for Fire attacks where you cannot actively heal them. Cure III or Medica for burst healing. Medica II to conserve MP or gradual HoTs on party. Save Swiftcast for Medica or Cure III if you have to move and heal. Alternate between Assize (60 sec CD) and Plenary Indulgence (60 sec CD) so you always have an instant AoE heal to pair with Medica/Cure III.

I think there's enough good advice here to cover what ya needed to cover for the fight so I'll go over some less SCH specific tips and perhaps point a few optimizations your party as a whole can do.

-Tanks Invulning through 2 out of 3 of the Dualcast + Thunder IIIs can make things less chaotic for the healers
-Addle from magical DPS can help out during heavy damage phases when neither healer can heal because of movement mechanics (namely both Black Holes)
-If a DPS / healer has TOO much HP with VIT melds and food, it can also make topping players off prior to White Hole a bit of a problem - with our group we found as long as you have between 37-39K HP you'll be alright
-WHM Specific Tip here - I find using Asylum for both Dark Holes to be very good in helping DPS stay up and healthy for the subsequent White Hole once mechanics are resolved. I Asylum at three places (1) In the middle-ish of the arena after the first Dualcast + Thunder III to get people topped off for Fire III --> White Hole (2) When the first Black Hole goes out [place by Exdeath to optimize DPS uptime] (3) When the second Black Hole goes out [Place by ExDeath] - You'll need to drop Asylum #1 quickly after the Thunder III resolves or else it won't be up by the time the first Black Hole goes off

I will also reiterate as others have that Surecast is your friend here. Being in a position that allows you to heal immediately after Vacuum Wave goes out minimizes movement and allows you to save your sprint for other things (IE, dealing with Black Hole + Fire III + Holy)

I will agree with Sebazy that the Black Hole component is the roughest part of the fight, and specifically the first Black Hole which is Black Hole + Fire III + Holy as it makes positioning tricky. The second Black Hole set is easy compared to this one and my advice for that set from our group was to have a way where both tanks are essentially on the far wings of the arena and the healers are in the far opposite end of the arena (both of these points are using ExDeath's position as the "front" for reference) and that'll reduce Flare damage appropriately.

One thing my group noted was that any shields that were out at the time Black Hole was going out seemed to be "consumed" when the HP down effect was applied, even if they were casted at the exact instance damage went out to pre-shield people for the upcoming mechanics. I don't know if anyone else experienced this but you may need to delay Succor's cast just slightly to get around this. Someone else with more shield experience may be able to shed some light on this if they had the same issue.

Thank you all for these great tips, I'm going to share them with my raid group.

Also yes, my co-healer is a white mage.

Remember you can use any instant skill with Surecast to still stay in-place, it's only consumed by a spell. So you can Surecast+Indom for that Wave+White Hole immediately. Not having to sprint gives you more time to ether decide if you need to patchwork another heal or get back to doing damage before you have to prepare for black holes.

Okay so I was able to go back in O4S with my group last night, and I think I'm starting to get my rotation for it down.

Whispering Dawn>Emergency>Succor for first white hole
Nature's Minne>Adlo>Deployment for stack and tentacles, indom while running
Succor and dps while dealing with mechanics, another emergency tactics and WD for white hole.
Do a succor right as black hole finishes, I notice the black voids don't start moving for a bit so I can get off a cast before starting to run.
Indom as I run in for the stack, maybe a sacred soil too?
Then I should be able to do an adlo>deployment again afterwards for meteor, think there were 20 seconds left on the cooldown or something at this point but that's the farthest we've gotten.
Also using Largesse when it seems I need a boost.

My white mage co-healer usually handles anything left over along with this (when she or others aren't dead, we're still learning how to do it consistent).

Does this look about right to people? Anything you think I should change?

Looks good for the most part, if your co-healer is a WHM using Cure III for White Holes you might be able to get away with not needing ET/Succor after, give or take ilevel. But it's good insurance since sometimes there are 1-2 people who still need HP but normally I'd do the same thing when we first got to the fight.

I do try to abuse the Largesse cooldown in this fight like before the first White Hole shield, and for the Black Holes. Largesse/Succor right when the HP down goes out. Anything to take less damage and make White Holes easier to top-up.