How Does A Beginner Play Scholar Now?

Hi everyone!

I have a black mage alt but the dark arts aren't really clicking with me. So, I'm thinking of switching to a scholar.

I know, I know. A lot of players say they are the weakest of healers now and I'd be better of going with a white mage or astrologian. But that's not what I want to play!

Scholars impress me and I want to be one too!

I run Palace of the Dead a lot and every run I've ... uh... run with a scholar has gone well. They've saved my bacon numerous times, like when my party gets that damn disabling trap, luring trap combination and all hell is breaking loose. I think we are going to wipe and next thing I know, the scholar has kept everyone alive and we manage to fight our way through the chaos and get to the end of the floor.

With the above said, I'm not certain I actually know how to be a good scholar. I don't want to get off on the wrong foot and develop bad habits. So, can anyone give me a brief "Idiot's Guide to Scholar Post 4.0?"

I appreciate any tips! Thank you! :)

Read up on Scholar Macros.

Fairys are stupid, but Macros can make them slightly better.

The best advice I can give you is start micromanaging your fairy as soon as you start. Obey stance and mastering placements for using their abilities is key to being a good Scholar. Beyond that the best thing you can do is learn the fights, as your abilities will truly shine when you can throw up mitigation before hits or get your fairy started on casting abilities so that it goes off at the right time, vs too late or early. You also get a lot of burst healing, which learning to manage aetherflow and when to use those abilities vs buffing your fairy or using a gcd heal is also key.

Scholar is a very fun and busy job later in the game and is still decently busy early on. You wont get the huge healing numbers of a WHM, but there is plenty of satisfaction from some of the later ability combos :)

Edit: As the above post says, yes the fairy is stupid so the more familiar you become controlling her the better, and even then it can be a bit frustrating.

I wouldn't say that SCH is the weakest out of all three.
They just aren't as strong as they used to be before SB.

One thing I relearned post 4.0 are :
1. Don't use Adloquium too much. Well, you should still use it, but only use it when as the final touch when you're topping off the tank's HP before a tank buster.
2. Lustrate and Indomitability are no longer your emergency heal. Treat it more like an MP free heal instead of emergency heal.
3. Use Excogitation as a signal to stop DPSing. I usually put an Adlo when topping off a tank, and then put excogitation on him. And I continue by putting DoTs on the boss, cast some broils until Excogitation's effect goes off. Then drop DPSing to top off the tank with Lustrate and Adlo and put Excogitation back when it's off cooldown.
4. For healing DPSes, usually Indomitability is enough to bring everybody back to health. You can even do it while DPSing since it's a no-target oGCD skill.

This might not be new to healers, but : Use Lucid Dreaming when your MP hits around 50% instead of when you ran out of MP.

But yeah, as others have said it, SCH shines when you know the fight and know what's coming.

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Originally Posted by Lildragora

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I can easily confirm this. i started play FF XIV right before the release of stormblood and started with scholar as my main and I love it. Utilizing your fairy really helps a lot. Your fairy actually priories moving with you over healing, which can be quite annoying, so learn to place her soon.
Furthermore try to use everything at your disposal, even if some skills seem very situational (I'm looking at you Dissipation), but they still find their fair amount of uses.

[A SALTY (highly exaggerated) GUIDE TO SCH 4.05]

1) Hope your co healer is not an AST locked on Noct stance (roughly 50% of DF ASTs will pull this crap)
1.1) If your co healer is an AST who has removed diurnal from their hotbars, you remove all healing spells from yours (if a wipe ensues you claim you were under the impression that they wanted to solo heal)

2) You are not actually a shield/mitigation healer. That is a notion from the past. Ignore succor unless your MP bar feels disgustingly full (or if it procs from SS. OR if you need to ET it for extra aoe healing)

3) Fairy on sic, she won't do what you tell her to anyway

4) Toss out the occasional lustrate or indom so that no one can accuse you of doing nothing but spam Broil II (rez too if necessary)

5) Remove summon II off your hotbars permanently

???

SCH mastered, happy off-healing!

NOTE: This has been written after a monday evening spent farming omega (normal) where half my AST co healers downright refused to change stances - apologies if I mortally offend any readers.

NOTE #2: But seriously though, it is a very fun job - plays differently than HW for sure (dunno if you played it in HW), but it is still a good healer regardless of changes/nerfs, only a lot more reactionary/emergency button push-y than before. Hands down the "hardest" part of the job is micromanaging fairy and conciliate her cooldown abilities/fey union/dissipation (dissipation is arguably ignorable).

Good luck!

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Originally Posted by Spiroglyph

[A SALTY (highly exaggerated) GUIDE TO SCH 4.05]



NOTE: This has been written after a monday evening spent farming omega (normal) where half my AST co healers downright refused to change stances - apologies if I mortally offend any readers.

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LOL! Thanks for the humorous post. You made my morning, Spiroglyph. :D

Other posters: Thank you for the tips!

Several of you mention fairy placement. Would a macro like the following work?

/pac Place <t>

I personally would advise against fairy command macros :/

Fairy AI is clunky af, macros only worsen that - it is easier to bind basic fairy commands to your hotbar (heel, place, sic, obey etc.,), to make sure fairy does what you tell her to. For example if you use Place while fairy is in the middle of casting Embrace, Place command will be queued and will go through once she is done with her cast - this however does not happen with macros as they cannot be queued, so chances are you will have a tough time with this kind of thing.

I think the only macro I use as SCH is Embrace spam macro, and eveb those can get kind of a pain...

Stuff like combining your healing spells and fairy healing spells are flat out useless - she works on different cast times than you, and since macros cannot be queued if she is in the middle of a cast it will not work. They also suck for placement issues - if your target is out of range you will noy get a system error message stating this, instead the heal will go off but it will target yourself thus wasting MP/GCD.

Outside of embrace spam macros I can't really think of any macros that work efficiently with fairy, sadly :/ SCH has always been the healer job with the most buttons to press, this remains true in SB (although AST now have those fancy discard buttons).

Just make sure to run plenty of dungeons to practise fairy placement - fairy will withdraw if you forget to Heel after a pull, so after a few runs of you wondering where the hell she has wandered off to and wasting MP to resummon her you should be good to go :)

NOTE as the person below me states macros are also useful for swapping out fairy skills if you change between Eos and Selene. Completely forgot about those as I seldom use Selene...

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

LOL! Thanks for the humorous post. You made my morning, Spiroglyph. :D

Other posters: Thank you for the tips!

Several of you mention fairy placement. Would a macro like the following work?

/pac Place <t>

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Yes, that macro would work to place your fairy on a target. I personally prefer to ground-target (on a controller no less) my fairy, but everyone has their own preference.

The only macros you might need on SCH are for Resurrect and Summon I/II. You can set up a Resurrect macro to select your target first "<t>", then go down your list of party members "<1-8>". Depending on how you sort your party list, this will go tanks first, then healers, then DPS. It just eliminates the need to manually target them in combat. You can also put Swiftcast in before your Res actions.

As for Summon macros, they're mainly so you can swap out your pet action slots for the appropriate faerie actions (Eos or Selene). It saves on slots so you don't have to have both sets of faerie actions slotted at the same time. You can also put Swiftcast in before your Summon action.

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As for managing the faeries, you're going to want to micro-manage Eos from the get-go. She likes to waste all of her actions as soon as they're off cooldown (she's a ditz) when you'll ideally want to save them for the opportune time. Selene doesn't have to be micro-managed if you don't want to. She uses Fey Wind on cooldown in combat, Fey Caress (AoE Esuna) when there are debuffs, and she'll try to interrupt enemy casting with Silent Dawn (even if the enemy is immune).

I'm probably a naughty Scholar, but I almost always use Selene over Eos in most content (though "most content" is dungeons since I'm still leveling). I love Fey Wind and Caress, and I also love relaxing a little and not micro-managing my fairy all the time.

I disagree with the above two posted about fairy macros. Your fairies don't listen to you because your macros need to force them to stop casting what they are doign and cast your command instead.

Now, the only time this can be a pain, is if someone is VERY low, sometimes Eos will insist on casting embrace first anyways. But regardless, my Whispering Dawn, Fey Illum and Fey Covenant macro has saved my ass many times.

Also, one tip. Please, utilize your spells. Emergency Tactics is your friend. Deployment Tactics is also your friend. Big AoE coming up? Forget fucking Succor unless it's a small AoE (and even then just DPs the boss and use Indom), Largesse + Fey Illum -> Adlo (hopefully a crit) -> Deployment Tactics = like a 22k shield if it crits, a 11k shield if it doesn't. THIS IS NOT A SMALL SHIELD. It just requires decent forethought.