SCH endgame/gear/stat cap Qs

Hey guys.

Finally got my 1st Lv.50 last night. (yay me.)

Anyway, I'm working on finishing the main story and unlocking all the dungeons. Just a few endgame questions.

1. In what order should I be getting my endgame gear?
2. Is there a cap on certain stats?
3. Is it advisable to level another job to Lv.50 to progress in endgame and for versatility?
4. Is SCH capable of soloing healing in all endgame content, or is WHM preferred in some?

Thanks.

If you don't have Swiftcast, get it (26 THM). That's all you really need for alt class skills as SCH that you won't get from leveling naturally (You get Protect on the way to 15 CNJ). Stoneskin is good but you'll usually be paired with a WHM in 8-mans and their version is better, so it's not nearly as required as Swiftcast. Get Swiftcast. Just get it. No excuses.

The only cap I'm aware of in the game for Stats is Accuracy, and that doesn't matter for us. Stat priority for SCH is Weapon dmg -> MND -> Crit.


SCH and WHM are both capable of solo healing content. Both have advantages in certain situations but overall they are equal.

Here is to answer your questions:

1. Order truly doesn't matter besides the linear progression of gear WP gear > AK gear > Darklight > Myth/Allagan.
2. There aren't any "caps" per say, but there are for like Coil, certain stats you must have, especially as Tanks and DPS. And to counter harkinate - why would weapon dmg be a priority for a healer? It doesn't effect heals. I get what you mean, but if you don't have your Relic/+1 before entering Coil, you're wrong. Also, all your Mind stats will come from your gear, even if you craft it, you can't meld with main stat.

Stat Priority should be - Crit -> Det (only see DR with DPS, not heals) -> Spell Speed

3. Yes it's nice to level another class or all the classes to Lv. 50. One, you'll get the Cross Class abilities (which you only need THM (26) and CNJ (34). But just so you have utility. THOUGH! If you are not a hardcore type of player I would stick to a single class for end game.
4. You can solo heal up to Titan HM.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NRhodes

Here is to answer your questions:
And to counter harkinate - why would weapon dmg be a priority for a healer? It doesn't effect heals. I get what you mean, but if you don't have your Relic/+1 before entering Coil, you're wrong.

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Weapon damage absolutely affects heals (to be more specific, Magic Damage). Each Magic Damage stat is roughly equivalent to 9 MND in terms of the healing boost. What are you even talking about? You say that then go on to say that if you don't have Relic before entering Coil you're wrong? What do you think is the primary reason for getting Relic+1? MND?

Also, regardless of where MND comes from it should have the highest priority on any gear choices you make, outside of the weapon. I never mentioned melds.

{Congratulations!}

While I'm not joining all endgame content as WHM or SCH I think there are some basic tips.


1. I'd say it's pretty much personal preference what you get first.
You will have to run dungeons for marks to get darklight or AF2 anyways, so you can replace most of your gear with the dropped ilvl55 (Wanderers Palace) or ilvl60 (Amdapor Keep) equipment.
Once you have enough marks to get a piece of darklight, just replace gear you couldn't replace with dungeon drops yet.
You should save 300 tomestones of mythology and 900 tomestones of philosophy for the relic quest.
You could also buy the crafted ilvl70 gear or let someone craft it for you. Some of the pieces will serve you well for a long time.

2. There are no caps as far as I know, just caps for melds on equipment. But there is a point where putting more points into a stat doesn't make much sense anymore.
For a healer mind, vitality and piety are the 3 most important stats. You should try to get a good ammount of vitality to have enough life for endgame content and make your life a bit easier. A dead healer has 0 healing potential ^^
For Titan hard mode for example it's good to be around 3500HP with group buff and food.
Secondary stats are a bit tricky. Most say put everything in crit, others go for more determination. My opinion is, that at a certain point adding more crit will have little to no effect, making other secondary stats more important.

3. You should level all the classes which offer you cross class abilities. That would be Conjurer for Stoneskin and Cleric Stance or Thaumaturge for Swiftcast for example.

4. I look at Schoolar more as a supporter than a main healer. It lacks the healing potential for that job. But that is ok.
Endgame content requires 8 players in general and the best setup for healing, in my opinion, is a WHM+SCH.
WHM does the big heals and group heals while SCH makes the life of the WHM easier and less MP intensive. Your pet is pretty decent as healer too and can be even more effective if you micromanage its abilities in certain situations.
Solo healing 4-man dungeons is no problem for a SCH.
Also don't forget that as SCH you will not run out of MP as easy as a WHM.

As a SCH who has recently done this same road myself, this was what I did, starting with full AF and the level 44 GC weapon.

>DF runs for Wanderer's Palace. You can't speedrun it, so just take your time and have fun.

You goals in WP are:

Darklight Grimoire to replace your weapon (drops off the Tonberry King)
Warlock gear to replace your AF.
Philosophy Tomes to purchase, first and foremost, the Darklight Cowl of Healing and the Darklight Breeches of Healing. Those two will give you an enormous stat boost.

Once you have those two pieces, the weapon, and Warlock gear everywhere else, that is a reasonable point to start your Relic quest. Once you unlock and clear Amdapor Keep, you should run it several times for the Strategos gear to replace your WP gear and get some of the Darklight Accessories. At that point you're geared enough to finish the Relic quest.

Grats on 50! To answer your questions:

1) Others have answered this in-depth, but in general try and get some sort of weapon upgrade (i.e. Ifrit book, Garuda book, etc.) so you'll have a decent weapon to use for Titan HM. Save up tomestones and get some Darklight gear (or get HQ Vanya made and melded if you are in a position to do so).

2) As others said, no caps really though there are apparently some diminishing returns...but I don't know if it's that significant. You'll be mostly aiming for Crit gear as a SCH (as opposed to spell speed and determination).

3) If you're looking to play SCH, I don't see why it's necessary to level another job to 50. Though as an Arcanist base class, you can also work on gearing up your SMN after your SCH gear is in place. This will give you an extremely viable DPS option for running content as SMN is highly desirable in endgame including Coil. As others mentioned, get cross-class abilities but prioritize Swiftcast as it's the most important. The only other cross-class that SCH can really make use of is stoneskin, but I would do that only if you have finished other things. Stoneskin is mostly useless for SCH, and even the situations in which you can use it it is not actually a requirement.

4) Both healers are essentially equally viable for all endgame content, at least in any sense that is worth talking about. The best healing duo is SCH+WHM by far, and both bring their own strengths to the table and synergize very well in 8-man content. SCH and WHM heal in different ways, but neither is truly better than the other for all situations, and both are required to perform equally-demanding healing roles in Coil.

Have fun! :)

I took the liberty of checking your gear on lodestone. My immediate advice would be to update all your accessories and belt from the market board to lv50 as soon as you read this. It doesn't matter which ones as long as you focus on healing items. It will only cost you a few thousand gil but you can easily recover them after you convert those items to materia upon gear replacement at a later stage. Your weapon as well, just to last a couple of rounds in WP for your WP gear and initial darklight farming.

Other than that, follow darksword's advice from above.

1. You could build yourself a Vanya Robe / Helm (via Weaver - totals for about 400k) and buy the rest of Tomestones of Philosophy
2. Crit has no cap as far as i know.
3. WHM to lv 34 (for Stoneskin) & THM to lv 26 (for Swiftcast)
4. Not sure about Coil (most difficult raid out atm), but i've seen a SCH solo healing Titan which is quite hard - in other words: Yes, SCH is a full-fledged healer.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NRhodes

Here is to answer your questions:

1. Order truly doesn't matter besides the linear progression of gear WP gear > AK gear > Darklight > Myth/Allagan.
2. There aren't any "caps" per say, but there are for like Coil, certain stats you must have, especially as Tanks and DPS. And to counter harkinate - why would weapon dmg be a priority for a healer? It doesn't effect heals. I get what you mean, but if you don't have your Relic/+1 before entering Coil, you're wrong. Also, all your Mind stats will come from your gear, even if you craft it, you can't meld with main stat.

Stat Priority should be - Crit -> Det (only see DR with DPS, not heals) -> Spell Speed

3. Yes it's nice to level another class or all the classes to Lv. 50. One, you'll get the Cross Class abilities (which you only need THM (26) and CNJ (34). But just so you have utility. THOUGH! If you are not a hardcore type of player I would stick to a single class for end game.
4. You can solo heal up to Titan HM.

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Up to and including Titan HM. (obviously not your first time)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kyana

*snip*
For a healer mind, vitality and piety are the 3 most important stats. You should try to get a good ammount of vitality to have enough life for endgame content and make your life a bit easier. A dead healer has 0 healing potential*snip*

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This is neither completely wrong nor true.
Yes, as heal you need Mind.
No, as a SCH you need neither Piety nor Vitality. The only fight i could imagine where you could need to have lots of HP as a heal is Twintania (Coil T5), but until you arrive there, well lets say it will take some time :>.

As far as I've seen, and in my experiences with Scholar so far, I've noticed the following:
1) Weapon damage DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE. The relic weapon was a nice upgrade, if you aren't running Deus Gratia fully melded, it'll be a noticeable bump in heals.
2) Crits make me squee in joy. Why? because every time I crit an adloquium, the barrier effect is doubled. With food, I'm running a 20%-ish crit chance, and I love it dearly. 900 adlo? 1800 barrier. Simply beautiful.
3) We don't need PIE for anything. Why? Because if you're a smart little book nerd, you keep using your aetherflow stacks / aetherflow ability every darn time it comes up, even if you're only missing 200MP. Why? because waiting to use aetherflow until your MP is low is just ridiculous.

Continued--
4) MND is nice, you don't need to rely on determination. Why? because 1 mnd = 5.44444444444444(into infinity) determination. If you're going to argue math, I'd prefer you take it up with the people I acquired the math from ( http://valk.dancing-mad.com/calculat...ng-calculator/ )
5) After MND, I stack spell speed, on personal choice. Some people I know may be perfect at ALWAYS hitting their heals at the right time, and never missing a prediction on pre-curing, but I don't like to take a chance in case I mess up. Only human, etc.

(STUPID CHARACTER LIMIT!) third post ---
6) SCH is a mitigation healer. What does that mean? Even if the people are at full HP, you can throw out a Succor or an Adloquium if you know that a move is coming. Learning to pre-cure, pre-heal, is important. Knowing when to use steady and manually control your pet (rouse->Whispering Dawn <3), or when to let your pet follow it's AI, is something you get to choose to learn, but pre-healing is not. The biggest hurdle I've noticed a lot of healers facing in endgame content, and one I've seen in Titan, is the fact that no one seems to want to predict the monster's attacks and actions. Most mobs have a pretty rote sense of acting out, a pattern, and if you can begin to recognise that, you'll be a-okay on Scholar, no matter the target.

FINAL POST!

On the topic of vitality...
I have a set of HQ astral melded with Vitality in prep for Coil, but the people I run with are not quite there yet. Because I gather and craft in an almost ritualistically insane fashion, along with running a tonne of WP with my little people, I have decided to do this, but it may not be the path you choose. If so, the person I consider my mentor told me I could 'suck it up and deal with it' when the time comes. Up to and until Coil, however, it's not an issue. As long as you can strafe your happy self out of red circles, you'll be A-Okay. If you can't move, then you may have to decide to stack in more vitality. That's not a choice anyone can make for you, because we don't know how well you dance.

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Originally Posted by Sanare_Anahita

FINAL POST!

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Just for information to post more than 1000 characters and not burn your daily post count you can edit a post ;)

To the OP, solo healing? in instances of 4 you are the healer and you can do all of them. Some good tests were doing Brayflox before leeches and Aurum Vale.

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Originally Posted by Kyana

(...)
4. I look at Schoolar more as a supporter than a main healer. It lacks the healing potential for that job. But that is ok.
Endgame content requires 8 players in general and the best setup for healing, in my opinion, is a WHM+SCH.
WHM does the big heals and group heals while SCH makes the life of the WHM easier and less MP intensive. Your pet is pretty decent as healer too and can be even more effective if you micromanage its abilities in certain situations.
(...)

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What you mean Main healer? Healing Tanks or Full group? Because focus on tank SCH will do it easier than WHM.
The perfect team is having both healer, that's how we run it anyways, I don't see anyone being "main" healer as we do it as a team we share the burden.

The trouble is that people only notice the amount of heal and not the prevention.
But as someone said "I don't know what you do but I notice when you don't"

As I main Scholar it is a very busy role to play because you have a lot of things to manage, whereas WHM is a bit more straight forward. But let me tell you that SCH is a main healer, not support. I have solo healed Titan, and am regularly finishing Coil T4, and healing on SCH is definitely as good as WHM if played correctly.

tldr;

Half-equipped Seline can soloheal AK if you throw in some lustrates. She can´t do that in WP. For whm wp may be the faster myth-runs. Doesn´t matter for sch (~15min vs ~20min geared)

Good first items for myth are the relic+1 and the pants. (Good boost and hard to get otherwise)

Good crafted items are Vanyarobe of healing and the rose gold circlet.

Avoid myth or crafted boots. Coil´s are easy to get, bis and not even much better.

There are no caps (rumored that aquo crit is capped at 470 critrating)

If you are aiming for full coil (T5) prepare to get the accessories for the vita-boost.

Must haves for the sch are Swiftcast and for 4-ppl inis clerics stance. Thunder is good to have for 1-4ppl, stoneskin is nice to have for coil.

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Originally Posted by Exstal

Up to and including Titan HM. (obviously not your first time)

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Turn 1 can be solo healed.

Turn 2 should be able to be solo healed. Maybe someone else will beat me to it, but I might try next lockout.

(Note: There's no good reason to solo heal any Turns in Coil, but you can)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bije

Turn 1 can be solo healed.

Turn 2 should be able to be solo healed. Maybe someone else will beat me to it, but I might try next lockout.

(Note: There's no good reason to solo heal any Turns in Coil, but you can)

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Turn 1 I'd never want to try it, but I'm guessing you'll have to be very fast in killing it. Anything more than 1 or 2 stacks on both snakes I don't think would be healable. Alternatively just let them combine and just kite it around, then you could go for a 1/1/6 setup.

Turn 2 I'd say definitely up until ADS uses rot, after that it's going to be rough for a solo healer. Worth a try though and much like Titan would rely on killing it fast and people not taking unnecessary damage.

Yeah, kiting allows you to ignore the fight, for the most part. Turn 1 solo healing was probably my most enjoyable experience in this game thus far. It was sloppy as it could be, and one tank did have to kite the last ~2% due to a screw-up on my part, but it was fun. I'll have to wait for our MNK to upload his video so I can see where the mobs were at stack-wise, since I didn't bother focus targeting Caduceus.

Turn 2, as you said, would depend on everyone being on their game for damage avoidance, and it could get a bit annoying with the raid-wide AoE damage (go go Succor :( ). But with an extra DPS, you should be able to out-pace the damage.

For either Turn, group composition is key. I wouldn't dream of solo healing Turn 2 without 4 ranged DPS (5 would be better). That, and solo-healing any of the end-game content (Titan/Coil) is 100% a group accomplishment, and there's no reason it couldn't be done with either healing class.

Answering in reverse since 1 is a little long-winded.

4) All 4man content is designed to be solo healed regardless of WHM or SCH. SCH for the most part doesn't even need to heal that much; fairy is sufficient healing except for very heavy pulls, some bosses, and hard-hitting enemies. 8man content has 2 healers and WHM+SCH is often the desired combo.

3) Not unless you want to. Swiftcast (26 THM) should be considered almost mandatory, and Stoneskin (34 CNJ) is nice to have but not as necessary. Having classes any higher than that doesn't directly benefit your SCH.

2) Posters above have answered this pretty sufficiently.

1) This depends a lot on how much money you have and what prices are like on your server, but this is what I recommend for a fresh 50.

Either get the item level 55 healing book from your Grand Company (need to clear Aurum Vale for last promotion quest), or buy a (HQ preferably) Erudite's Picatrix of Healing. You can also do Wanderer's Palace with a cheaper alternative and hope for Darklight Grimoire to drop. All of these are about equal weapons and, worst case scenario, are sufficient until relic.

For gear, you should have at minimum full AF gear from your quest and the highest 46-49 accessories, again preferably HQ. If they are affordable, HQ Militia Robe (and associated other slots) can be used but shouldn't be necessary.

Once you have this or are in the process of it, you're more than geared for Wanderer's Palace (generally quicker) or Amdapor Keep (slower, but provides item level 60 gear [Strategos set]). Completing either of these gives you Allagan Tomestones of Philosophy and Mythology. Myth tomes are capped in how many you can get in a week and used for i90 gear. Philosophy is for i70. Both can be redeemed at Mor Dhona.

You want to focus on getting a mix of i70 (Darklight) and i60 (Strategos) to replace your "minimum" gear. For Darklight, you generally want to focus on left-side gear (body, legs, etc) first because it is also a generous supply of VIT which you will want for Titan hard mode. That said, make the biggest jumps in ilvl first. Strategos body is a pretty common drop from final chest in Amdapor Keep, so I would upgrade hands/legs/feet first in terms of Darklight. Accessories are cheap upgrades for their philosophy cost as well.

In terms of your relic questline, Ifrit should be clearable with your "minimum" gear, Garuda should be manageable with some pieces of Darklight/AK gear, and Titan should be avoided until you can hit somewhere between 3k and 3.2k HP in party. Use food if necessary to hit that HP; Buttons in a Blanket, Mulled Tea, Deviled Eggs are all good options at 50.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NRhodes

Stat Priority should be - Crit -> Det (only see DR with DPS, not heals) -> Spell Speed

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This "weighting" is incorrect and built on a fundamental ignorance of how Adloquium works. Adloquium does not become stronger with crit. The heal has a chance to crit followed by a 2x shield as a result. Your heal will be 1.5x due to crit and your shield will be 2x that crit. However, you will only be able to get approximately 18-19% crit right now. You will have a chance for a larger variance of heals, but your average heal will not increase per se as you are relying on a probabilistic heal.

Determination will increase all of your heals uniformally. Your Physick and Adloquium heal component will always be larger with Det. This means you'll have a smaller variance and range. Your average heal will increase overall.

Knowing this: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...=sharing#gid=0

I draw you to look at the Simulation area and at 4:1 Physick:Adlo. You'll see that Crit weighted will shield and heal for 127907. If you go Det and Allagan, you'll shield and heal for 125864. That's less than 2,000 healed over 250s. The only time you'll see crit shine is if you spam Adlo and get lucky with crits.

So, it's suggested that you weight Det or Crit based on your chosen heal style. Det is great for sustained. Crit will be great for burst. Both will do the same job.

Assuming full i90 (MND focus is vital), changing from a BiS crit focus to a BiS det focus is only like 3 pieces I believe; trading Myth (crit focus) body/earring/necklace for Allagan equivalents (det).

Body: 17 det vs 24 crit
Earring: 8 det vs 16 crit
Necklace: 11 det vs 11 crit

Every other slot is pretty clear-cut* for one piece over the other whether you value Det over Crit or vice versa, as long as you value both over Spell Speed (and we're of course assuming you have the good fortune and time to get everything ideally).

*For clarity:
Weapon: Allagan
Head: Myth/Allagan are identical
Body: Allagan if Det, Myth if crit
Hands: Allagan
Legs: Identical
Feet: Myth ideally, but it's 5 PIE vs Allagan's 5 spell speed so not life or death

Belt: Myth
Neck: Myth if crit, Allagan if det
Ear: Myth if crit, Allagan if det
Wrist: Myth
Ring: Both

Thanks for the responses, guys. It's been real helpful.

Sadly, I haven't been able to spam dungeons to the point of capping weekly tomes due to my work schedule and some holiday shopping. I'll get there eventually, though. :P