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As the title says I am looking for some help with understanding scholar. I've been ruinning WM for a while but wanted something different and soon going to have a arcanist hit the job level and was gonna give scholar a spin and see how it goes. Any tips and tricks to understanding scholar would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance for the tips and info! :D
There is a lot to cover there, and not having played WHM I can't rightly tell you their differences. If you've just unlocked it, read every skill you get carefully, there's some hook to most of them. You get some mitigation through shields and buffs, preventing as much as possible damage gives you less health to heal up after an attack. Some quick bits that might help:
* Remember to summon your fairy, you have to summon skills, but it's only cosmetic difference and both are Lily. She'll constantly heal if a party member is under 100% hp and in range. Either manually place her or check where she is before using Whispering Dawn or Fey Illumination so it hits everyone. First is heal over time, other is magic defence and healing recieved from spells increased. If you place her, she'll stay there until you tell her to heel or she'll disappear if you too far away.
* If you check the spellbook there are two versions of all the fairy spells. Take note of these: One is the command, the other is the fairy's spell, these are called the same thing with different descriptions. You can only put the command on your hotbar. Can't edit the pet hotbar.
* Adloquium (single-target) and Succor (aoe) heals for an amount then applies shields for 125% of the amount healed. These are expensive to use so try using them for shielding or healing with Emergency Tactics, then fill up healthbars with Whispering Dawn, Indom, Physick, Excog, Lustrate, Fey Blessing.
* If you get a crit heal with Adlo, you apply an additional shield called Catalyze for another 125% of the amount healed.
* If target already have Galvanize you won't be able to overwrite it unless your next heal is bigger than the previous one.
* Differniate between spells and Abilities: Physick, Embrace, Adlo and Succor are spells and are affected by "healing spells increased" from Fey Illum. and Dissipation. Lustrate, Excog, Indom, Excog, Sacred Soil and fairy skills are all abilities, these do not benefit from the healing buffs you have.
* At 45 you get Aetherflow. 1 min cooldown that restores 10% mp and gives 3 Aetherflow stacks that can be used for differet spells: Lustrate (single target) and Energy Drain (deals damage and restores some of your your mp and hp) at first. Then later for Excog(strong single target), Indom (aoe heal), Sacred Soil (damage reduction field and much later, heal over time). Aetherflow can only be used in combat, but any stacks you have can be used whenever.
* On offence you get Ruin/Broil as 2.5s cast nuke spell, Bio/Biolysis for 30s dot, Ruin II for instant cast if you need to move and Art of War for instant melee range aoe. Just be careful approaching a large group, even if they face the tank they can cleave and use large aoes.
That's some broad strokes and there's more to it. Recommend playing it, standing in front of a training dummy and using every spell over and over, then doing dungeons with it to understand it better.
Generic advice will be generic. Other than reading what your buttons do:
SCH revolves around Aetherflow, your most important button. It's a very important part of your MP management and it unlocks your most powerful abilities. The first thing you have to master is using this skill on cooldown and making sure to not lose stacks.
You'll figure out many things on your own by just playing it.
Other than that, it depends. Where do you plan to take your SCH? Dungeons? Ex Trials? Savage? Ultimate? This will determine how deep of an understanding of SCH you need.
Thanls for the info
Apologies replying on phone. Meant to give thanks to Sloprano and LariaKirin for the info. As far as long term goals I am not one to run savage or anything like that I mainly just run the roulette and do what is need for MSQ
If you want to play sch you need to understand that your ogcd are your most useful and main source of healing and your job is to balance them while you dps as much as you can, gcds should only be used when they are strictly needed like in hard hitting mechanics or when you run out of ogcd.
When it comes to healing sch heals could be classified in different tiers:
Tier 0: Fairy embrace
Tier 1: Fairy skills, Seraph, Consolation, Recitation+Indom/Excog
Tier 2: Aetherflow skills (Sacred soil, lustrate, excog...)
Tier 3: GCD Heals with shield
Tier 4: Physick
As Sch your job when it comes to healing is to heal using the lowest tier heal possible (For example, If you can heal something with the fairy skill "Whispering dawn" which is tier 1 you should use it instead of indom which is tier 2 or succor which is tier 3). The reason behind this is the cost:
Tier 0: This heal is free since Eos/Selene does it automatically so it literally cost you anything (And its also your weakest heal)
Tier 1: These heals cost you 80 potency since to properly weave them you want to use ruin 2 instead of your main damage spell (broil 3 which has 280 potency vs the 200 of ruin 2), if you dont have broil 3 unlocked the cost changes being always the difference between your hardest hitting spell and ruin 2 (For example at lv 50 your hardest hitting spell is Ruin 1 with a potency of 160 while Ruin 2 has 150 so the cost there is 10)
Tier 2: These heals cost you 80 potency to properly weave them + 150 of an aetherflow stack that cannot be used on energy drain since all the heals of this tier use 1 aetherflow stack, the skills of this tier are easily the most versatile and strong in all sch's kit so knowing them and learning when they are best used is a must.
Tier 3: These heals have a cost of 280 (or the potency of your main dps spell), they cost mp and give shields, while powerful shoudnt be abused since they will drain your mp really fast, have the highest of costs and they are less versatile than your ogcd heals.
Tier 4: Physick, same cost as Tier 3 but without shields, lowest healing/mitigation power in your entire kit, you shoudnt use it unless you need to use a gcd heal on an already shielded party member or you are extremely low on mp.
When it comes to dps is pretty simple, use your main nuke as much as you can, use ruin 2 for weaving, keep your dot up as much as possible and weave as much energy drain as you can.
I hope its not confusing, sch is a very proactive healer with a lot of skills that fills different niches in the battle so the best way of learning is trying it.
Wow thanks WaxSw that's a great run down which helps to clarify where spells would fall into category of potency and along with what Sloprano gave me this gives me a good idea of what to expect going in. Adding this with the description of the spells themselves with in-game practice will help me out tremendously thanks again everyone!