How do you play SCH in PVP.

Curious, because I seem to fail in the self-sustain department and I'm curious as to how some of the other SCHs out there handle the situation of being knocked around.

I run 1 VIT acc with my VIT PVP skill maxed out.

I'm mostly looking for tips on what skills I could use to help my survivability.

Am I at less than 75% health? OH GOD LUSTRATE LUSTRATE LUSTRATE! Oh crap I'm out of Aetherflow stacks!

If you've only got one or two guys attacking you, use Equanimity and just use Adlos and Physicks to heal through it.

If it's a larger group, Aura Blast them away and run to safety. Aetheric Burst is pretty good for this too.

If you're far away from the rest of your team, Attunement is just going to be a delaying tactic. If you've got no follow-up plan, then it might be better to just accept the death and save the Attunement cooldown for when it might actually be useful. If you're in a situation where Aura Blast or Aetherflow is about to come back up, then Attunement can buy you those few extra seconds you need to knock them away or cure through their attacks until you reach your team. If your pet is up, she might be able to heal you up to full while your enemies swing and miss, but again, it won't do you much good if don't have a follow-up plan.

Speaking of fairies, don't forget about them! It's easy to lose your pet in the hecticness of PVP, whether from enemies attacking her, or simply rooting/stunning her while you run off, causing her to despawn. Make sure to keep an eye on your pet bar, and resummon your fairy as needed.

Always be buffing! If you're not healing, you're casting Protect, Stoneskin or Adlo. This is doubly true for yourself, since even with VIT accessories, a melee LB can take you down quick. Any time you finish a skirmish, the first thing you want to do is refresh Stoneskin. Don't forget to cast it on your fairy, too!

When you are in survival mode for sch, you have to look to all the instants in your arsenal - mostly because you should be sprinting or running to get the hell out of there. Obviously lustrate is nice when you have the stacks, but when you're out don't forget you have dissapation (as a true oh shit moment). But also, emergency tactics is instant as well, so if you have swiftcast up, use emergency tactics followed by a swiftcasted aldo can save you if you're completely out of stacks.

However, the main key of survival is map awareness. Are you in an open field? Can you line of sight people with pillars or walls? Where are you with regards to the rest of the party? If you looking for the tank playstyle, that comes more with time and practice (and another good healer to help you keep up sometimes!) Sprint is huge with getting away and running behind something to get a quick physick off.

But like Beckett said, as a sch you should be working on buffing yourself. Honestly, having stoneskin and aldo on yourself is pretty much gold, so whenever you have down time you should be doing that to yourself (and others). Aldo stays on for 30 secs and who knows what will happen to you in that amount of time!

Don't worry about dieing too much. Just try to position yourself better. That goes a lot farther at 60 then vit does. At 50 vit was god, you could literally kite 6 dps on you back and forth across the map. But with burst at 60 and quality dps you can easily be taken out. You see lots of dps with 10+ kills. Fear Monks, Warriors, and Dragoons they all have 12k plus rotation plus limit break and Warrior I have seen get 18k off.

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Originally Posted by Beckett

Always be buffing! If you're not healing, you're casting Protect, Stoneskin or Adlo. This is doubly true for yourself, since even with VIT accessories, a melee LB can take you down quick. Any time you finish a skirmish, the first thing you want to do is refresh Stoneskin. Don't forget to cast it on your fairy, too!

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I disagree with this one, first of all def/mdef (and thus protect) does not affect pvp. It gives you a buffer against MNK's mass buff removal but no one plays MNK. Throw away protect and put blizzard II and surecast on your pvp bar.
Time is better spent on watching map/throwing miasma on targets

For OP:

Eating your fairy for aetherflow stacks -> lustrate is quite useful in contrast to pve. Your fairy is bad at healing moving targets (you).

The VIT (and any other stat) PVP skills give too little return for their cost. Instead, use more vit accessories.

There may be a reason why you get targeted often - are you on the edge of your party (front, and left/right side is vulnerable to tab target)?

You can choose to be out of sight - this can be as simple as not using flashy mounts or wearing flashy gear, hiding behind rocks or on high points, standing at the centre/back of your party etc.
You can also choose to be targeted - wear lots of VIT accessories and have ~11-13k HP and it will be a lot harder for you to die. The healing potency loss isn't too bad (~10-20%) although I think it affects sch more than other healers. Upgrade purify, attunement, aura blast (don't upgrade damage), focalization (potency), aetheric burst. Probably in that order.

Survival tactics:
Sprint and Line of sight behind rocks or up stairs -> Adlo
Surecast -> Adlo
Equilibrium -> Adlo spam and blizzard II on last cast
Swiftcast -> Adlo
Run to a choke point such as stairs and run back toward the enemy, Swiftcast -> Blizzard II
Lustrate Lustrate Lustrate Aetherflow Lustrate Lustrate Lustrate Dissipation Lustrate Lustrate Lustrate

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Originally Posted by Sylkis

I disagree with this one, first of all def/mdef (and thus protect) does not affect pvp. It gives you a buffer against MNK's mass buff removal but no one plays MNK. Throw away protect and put blizzard II and surecast on your pvp bar.

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Fair enough. I've long wondered about Protect. I thought it didn't work in PVP, but then I always saw people casting anyway, so I figured I must've been wrong. I'll gladly put on another Equanimity and/or an AoE root instead.

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Time is better spent on watching map/throwing miasma on targets

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I'm mostly referring to non-combat time. Far too many healers spend off time standing around like morons instead of refreshing buffs. It's easy enough to keep track of the map while getting Stoneskin on everyone around you.
In combat, definitely throw out your DoTs, so long as everyone around you (including people not in your party) is in no danger.

For trying to survive or escape this is what I do:

1. Place fairy with Stay, Sustain
2. Change to Obey
3. Spam Embrace and everything else when possible
4. Run around the fairy, not away. But, keep moving always and in a big circle.
5. Aldo and Eye for an Eye on fairy, then Deployment Tactics
6. Pop cds as needed. I save Swiftcast for Emergency Tactics and Aldo.

Some DPS might insist on killing the fairy first, if they do, keep moving the fairy. The trick is to keep placing that fairy and running around it. You can also Attune and let it heal you for a while. Always have Stoneskin up before any encounters. Dissipation is awesome in PvP. I also use all but one Vit accessories, and maxed out Vit in PvP attributes. Usually DPS get tired of chasing me or I make it to my party.