SCH dps in A1 Savage and how to improve.

Hey guys, so its that wonderful time again with any progression raid team when everyone buckles up and improves their dps. But this time its with SCH, the joys.

So my raid group is downing A1S consistently now, but the enrage check is tight, like really tight. So we have been told that we all need to increase our dps, and here is me on SCH been given the figure of 300-350+ (iirc) to get and maintain in A1S Opressor. So i need help from you guys :).

General strat to give an idea of what we do, phase 1 i dps and solo deal with prays as SCH. Not difficult to do, obviously dealing with pray makes DPS drop. On split, we split into 2 groups, i have to heal one group with WAR as tank, WHM heals other, and we do tend to split fairly far apart. WAR is in deliverance a lot of the time, switching to defiance as prays go out. I deal with a pray, keep WAR alive (usually drops like a rock here) but also often find having to use all my lustrates in this phase due to haiving to lustrate other pray terget sometimes, and occasionally the PLD. Also going into prays most of the party is at 50% hp after the aoes have gone out from bosses, so on occasion indom has to be used by me to stabilise my group, that or some form of aoe healing from me (usually rely on whispering dawn ticks on first and third). So far in this strat i have found that i can often throw up my dots before the jumps and there are few other times that present themselves for me to be able to throw out dots whilst WAR is in deliverance.

And then its just rinse and repeat.

So my questions are how are other SCH managing to DPS amongst the mess that is the Opressor fight?

Can things be changed in the strat to facilitate more SCH dps?

It would also be interesting to know if SCH dps in your guys groups is that high as well?

Also raid composition is WAR/PLD/WHM/SCH/MNK/BRD/SMN/BLM.

Thanks in advance for the responses :).

Most scholars (myself included) purely dps on the first phase. Preys and general healing can and should be handled by the white mage. You don't heal at all in the first phase except for with your faerie.

After the split you can multidot if you find the time but you probably won't have the time.

I'm kinda surprised you're doing preys in the first phase, like, why? It takes a bit of practice but your white mage should be able to cover that pretty well.

Try to get your WHM to handle the preys in P1, it will increase your dps quite a bit. I usually hit the split at about 650-700 DPS. After that I throw some DoTs on my oppressor, heal until just after the tank buster, then the WHM solo heals while I DPS until the jumps. Once the Oppressors land, I DoT up and rinse and repeat.
My dps is usually 350-400 in A1S, and we usually beat enrage by 10 or so seconds.

Though, if I'm honest, if you are that tight to enrage, I would suggest that your DPS and tanks are having more of an issue than you.

From WHM PoV:

Phase 1 SCH DPS all the way except 2 GCDs (1 adlo per prey victim), the Adlo on the prey victim is not really required but it acts as a safety net in case I miscalculated a GCD.

Phase 2:
SCH can DPS all the way until Resin Bomb cast, but I recommend Indom/Succor once to assist in topping people up from the Gunnery Cannon damage that happened right after the casting of 3 Ton Missile.
Keep in mind there's a Royal Fount (the laser mini tank buster) directly after the Resin Bomb cast bar, so depending on the condition on your designated tank, you may have to exit Cleric 1~2 GCDs earlier.

Heal until Hyper Compression tank buster.

Resume DPS until after the Gunnery Cannon, and heal your designated tank up for the incoming Royal Fount.

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Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

I'm kinda surprised you're doing preys in the first phase, like, why? It takes a bit of practice but your white mage should be able to cover that pretty well.

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Yeah i know, we tried me on pure dps in first phase but went back to me soloing preys. Cant quite remember why, but thats the decision that was made.

Also with multi dotting i find before the jumps is the only time i can do this O.o.

Well at least i dont seem to be doing anything wrong on the healing side of things :).

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Originally Posted by DreamWeaver

From WHM PoV:

Phase 1 SCH DPS all the way except 2 GCDs (1 adlo per prey victim), the Adlo on the prey victim is not really required but it acts as a safety net in case I miscalculated a GCD.

Phase 2:
SCH can DPS all the way until Resin Bomb cast, but I recommend Indom/Succor once to assist in topping people up from the Gunnery Cannon damage that happened right after the casting of 3 Ton Missile.
Keep in mind there's a Royal Fount (the laser mini tank buster) directly after the Resin Bomb cast bar, so depending on the condition on your designated tank, you may have to exit Cleric 1~2 GCDs earlier.

Heal until Hyper Compression tank buster.

Resume DPS until after the Gunnery Cannon, and heal your designated tank up for the incoming Royal Fount.

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Yeah forgot about the dots i throw out whilst waiting for resin bombs to go off :).

And will try going into dps after gunenry cannon as well thanks :).

Also i assume that the WHM covers most of the aoe healing in phase 2 then?

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Originally Posted by DarkerOrange

Try to get your WHM to handle the preys in P1, it will increase your dps quite a bit. I usually hit the split at about 650-700 DPS. After that I throw some DoTs on my oppressor, heal until just after the tank buster, then the WHM solo heals while I DPS until the jumps. Once the Oppressors land, I DoT up and rinse and repeat.
My dps is usually 350-400 in A1S, and we usually beat enrage by 10 or so seconds.

Though, if I'm honest, if you are that tight to enrage, I would suggest that your DPS and tanks are having more of an issue than you.

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Cool thanks:). Seems there are a few windows i can take advantage of to dps more :).

There's 3 Gunnery Cannons in Phase 2, I can solo heal the 2nd (Medica + Assize) and 3rd (no incoming damage until jump damage) comfortably.

The 1st one however, as a WHM I'll really appreciate it if the SCH can throw out an Indom/Succor to assist, as the DPS are getting hit on by the 4 adds, and the ticks from my Divine Sealed Medica II may not be enough for them to survive the 2nd Gunnery Cannon. Of course if the SCH is insistent on DPSing, it's a non issue on my part as well, I'll just throw down an additional Medica after my Medica II, but this will depend on the WHM's MP conservation skill.

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Originally Posted by DreamWeaver

There's 3 Gunnery Cannons in Phase 2, I can solo heal the 2nd (Medica + Assize) and 3rd (no incoming damage until jump damage) comfortably.

The 1st one however, as a WHM I'll really appreciate it if the SCH can throw out an Indom/Succor to assist, as the DPS are getting hit on by the 4 adds, and the ticks from my Divine Sealed Medica II may not be enough for them to survive the 2nd Gunnery Cannon. Of course if the SCH is insistent on DPSing, it's a non issue on my part as well, I'll just throw down an additional Medica after my Medica II, but this will depend on the WHM's MP conservation skill.

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Thanks noted and will try :).

P1 is very easy for the WHM to solo heal. I throw Medica II on everyone, Regen and Asylum the MT, Regen on the Prey target, Tetra the Prey target after AoE. Maximum DPS for both healers in this phase that way. Our static SCH also has his fairy spamming Embrace on the MT which usually means I usually only have to slip out of Cleric to refresh Regen.

When 0.5 comes out, DoT both of the bosses and then get ready for the AoEs and double prey. You might be able to sneak in some Ruin II's while dodging Resins, but I don't know how ideal that is.

There is a bit of "down time" after the double Preys before the jump. There's only really tank cleaves and one last AoE. You could probably throw some DoTs on the bosses before they jump, as long as you and the WHM aren't MP starved. Once they land, you can get all 3 of your DoTs out on each, but you have to be really quick with this because the missiles are fast (I usually have to PoM these DoTs myself sometimes, depending on where they land).

Rinse and repeat.

In P1 our SCH can burst nearly 1k DPS each (I know for sure I'm sub 750 because I do have to heal and I don't use MND Pots because I chug X-Ethers like college kids do beer, but using a MND Pot in P1 can give you some really insane burst). As the fight goes on, this drops considerably. By the time the fight is over he's at about 300-400 DPS over the whole fight while I'm at 200-100.

My static has the same set up, btw. :) Not many double caster groups. Though, do make sure the BRD and SMN are double DoTing both bosses!

I do completely solo heal P1 as WHM while the SCH do DMG. During P1 he is around 750 DPS. (our setup yesterday was PLD/WAR/WHM/SCH/SMN/BLM/BLM/BRD). Our best Split came with 57% life that day.

The more DMG you get out in P1, the less you have to do after that ;)

The way I look at it is: Damage done in P1, (i.e. before the split), is worth twice as much as all subsequent damage, so P1 is the most important phase for healer and OT dps.

As other said, SCH should focus purely on DPS in P1. There is no damage going out that the other healer shouldn't be able to handle alone.

My "tank buddy" tanks his Oppressor in Deliverance much of the time, but I still have opportunity to refresh DoTs at the least. 3k Missile, Resin Bomb, and Phaser casts are all good opportunities to gain a few GCDs of risk-free DPS.

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

As other said, SCH should focus purely on DPS in P1. There is no damage going out that the other healer shouldn't be able to handle alone.

My "tank buddy" tanks his Oppressor in Deliverance much of the time, but I still have opportunity to refresh DoTs at the least. 3k Missile, Resin Bomb, and Phaser casts are all good opportunities to gain a few GCDs of risk-free DPS.

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^^^ Absolutely agree. :)

There's a lot of downtime in damage too! If you're using Eos to assist in healing though, I generally pop Whispering Dawn & Rouse during first Gunnery and third Gunnery so the WHM doesn't need to use Medica II. In the time I Scholar'd for my group's clear, the range of Whispering Dawn was enough to reach everyone excluding both tanks.

IMO, if you are looking for extra DPS, you should be using Selene, not Eos.

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Originally Posted by DarkerOrange

IMO, if you are looking for extra DPS, you should be using Selene, not Eos.

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For this one I'd say it depends on the party and on the healer.

Selene has been my go-to fairy for most content for some time, but now that SCH personal DPS has spiked higher thanks to Broil serving as filler while being more than twice the potency of Ruin, I'm encountering situations where using an Illuminated+Roused WD will greatly increase my DPS uptime and overall numbers.

I suppose the real question would be what sort of DPS increase we can reasonably expect Fey Wind to provide on average vs. what personal DPS increase we might expect from the SCH and possibly the co-healer in an encounter where Eos negates or severely mitigates the damage from certain mechanics that would otherwise force the healer to drop Cleric and patch up. I don't have numbers to support either option, but I'm curious to see what others are finding.

Fair enough. I still see 3% atk sp on 8 people as better then Eos, but that is probably cos my WHM partner is pretty good at picking up the slack.

Oh, and just wait til A2S, I'm currently pulling 1.2k DPS on SCH up until Wave 7, haha.

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Originally Posted by DarkerOrange

Fair enough. I still see 3% atk sp on 8 people as better then Eos, but that is probably cos my WHM partner is pretty good at picking up the slack.

Oh, and just wait til A2S, I'm currently pulling 1.2k DPS on SCH up until Wave 7, haha.

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Good point about your WHM partner. That could indeed make the difference if they are able to help cover your AoE healing and aren't benefiting as much from Whispering Dawn.

In my group the WHM isn't operating much on my side of the fight, so I started using Eos to free up more of my GCDs for DPS and for shielding my Deliverance tank (I'm fine with him DPS-tanking, but it requires more support from me to keep him safe). Maybe it's time to bring Selene back in and see if overall DPS increases at all, or if my personal contribution with the HoT padding was greater.

I personally use Selene before the split and change to Eos when 0.5 shows up.

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Originally Posted by Taika

I personally use Selene before the split and change to Eos when 0.5 shows up.

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Yep this is what i have been doing as well, pushing to sub 59% hp before spilt seems to be needed for smooth run :).

As a sch, here is my take on a1s. I am 190ilv with hive weapon. I use Selene on sic while dpsing until I start healing where I swap to obey. Pre pull I Adlo spam the main tank until Crit and deploy to the party. I swap to cleric and pre cast shadow flare 3seconds before pull. I mind pot and start casting dots on oppressor. Entire phase 1 I'm keeping dots and flare up broiling in between. Be watchful for dots missing it's the pain in my ass, I find miasma and aero miss the most. Given how preys go I will drop cleric to adlo the prey usually if it is on a clothy or bars with b4b up. Back to dps until split and missiles come out at which point I have dotted .5 and refreshed dots on 1.0 I drop cleric and heal until after jumps. Part 2 coming
EDIT: We reach about 57-60% usually in phase 1 before split.

Part 2: 4 adds spawn followed by resins, raid damage happens and at this point while photon spasers are happening, its important to top off the raid. After lasers, raid damage happens, however leave the raid hurt and top off your tank while watching for prey. Swap to prey and heal them through 3-4 out of the 6 hits have them topped off/able to survive the remaining hits and get ready for tank buster, as a SCH this consists of virus on the Boss, top your tank off, usually I get a physick, lustrate if needed followed by an adlo, along with tank cds(usually heal the warrior) brings them to about 1/4-1/2 life. heal tanks, heal raid. At this point there is some raid damage along with moderate tank damage. For our group, depending on my MP/Aetherflow stacks, I have our WAR swap to deliverance to blow out some damage, I like to have at least 1 lustrate ready to hit him with, along with a couple of adlo for the royal font(Mini tank buster) part 3 coming

Part 3:
When jumps happen, I adlo the warrior and deploy once again, we handle jump-resins by running to a boss drop location and running along wall to a free corner, as running place a Sacred soil in the corner and precast a succor to hit as the jump damage is coming out(takes practice to time properly) At this point the raid is pretty much topped off and remainder will be healed up with medica 2. I swap to cleric stance and dps with our whm tossing a regen on my tank(she says the damage here is very minimal and can maybe dps some herself) I dot both bosses, and a shadow flare at which point missles have just spawned again and damage is about to pick up. Rinse and repeat from here on out. part 4 coming

Part 4: We have our SMN LB3 when its ready and for the last phase before enrage, if we have adds spawn, we kill them asap(not needing to be under a missle) and kill off the bosses. we have been playing around with the very end of the fight, if we should kill one off before preys spawn or not, depending on how low they are. We have yet to clear but are pretty consistantly hitting a .5-1.5% wipe.

Of course, suggestions for what we/I can do better are always welcome and I hope this little overview of my take ont he fight can help others out there.

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Originally Posted by Taika

I personally use Selene before the split and change to Eos when 0.5 shows up.

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Yep, that is what we do as well. Selene can come back out for final jump push if-needed.

What others have said, SCH should dps full uptime in P1. Well, to be fair, there's one tricky moment about P1 you might want to help your WHM a bit, and it's on the second prey, the boss mixes it with explosion + laser on tank and it is a bit of a pain solo healing that (can be done, but depending on how things turn, -eg, the boss trolls your WHM with photon spaser constantly- it can be dangerous).

My advice is:

1 - FULL DPS in P1 except in the second prey, help your whm a bit there.
2 - In P2, there are 2 significant downtimes.
a) The first one is Resin Bomb + Photon Spaser (be careful though, because immediately right after that it does double explosion, double prey and tank buster...so gtfo from cleric fast after photon spaser because immediately fun begins...)
b) The second one is after tank buster (hypersomething cannon), just immediately top your tank. The boss does a couple autoattacks and photon spaser again, you have time to DPS there.

And that's it basically. You can try finding more gaps to DPS, but these are the safest one I've come across. A1S is very easy, we've oneshot it the last 2 weeks.

Currently banging our heads on A3S. That thing is a mess...

Why can't SCH heals 1st phase and WHM dps? I as a WHM like numbers too.

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Originally Posted by CompSci88

Why can't SCH heals 1st phase and WHM dps? I as a WHM like numbers too.

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It's a combination of:

1) WHM has better raw healing throughput to handle crunches/party AoE.
2) WHMs don't have anywhere near the same level of mana regen as SCH, and their main source of single-target damage (Stone III) costs a hefty amount of mana.
3) SCH has three skills that bypass accuracy checks for single target (Bio I, Bio II, and Shadow Flare), meaning that not being in fully-pentamelded right-side doesn't hurt them quite as badly as WHM (which has 0 skills that bypass accuracy checks).

They also may just straight-up do better damage, but I haven't seen enough parses to say anything solid.

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Originally Posted by CompSci88

Why can't SCH heals 1st phase and WHM dps? I as a WHM like numbers too.

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Three main reasons:

1 - SCH is prone to missing less (Bio II, Bio and Shadow Flare can't miss).
2 - DPSing 100% uptime costs more mana than healing, so SCH suffers less from doing so.
3 - Ask yourself this question, what heals more and better, a fairy and a SCH, or a fairy and a WHM?

I'm a little new to the whole SCH dps thing myself. Switched from WHM main to AST, and now to SCH. You guys use the typical Bio II, Miasma, Bio, Shadow Flare along with Broil Spam, or Ruin 2 when moving right? Do you also throw in Aero as well? We only recently cleared AS1 ourselves this week, so I'm looking at anyway to improve my dps as well.

is it worth it for both Healers to pop HQ Potent Poison Pots or should they save the CD on Mind Potions then cleric stance?

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Originally Posted by BannedatRegistration

is it worth it for both Healers to pop HQ Potent Poison Pots or should they save the CD on Mind Potions then cleric stance?

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Poison and Stat Potion are on different CDs. But Poison only works till level 50 mobs. There are no level 60 poisons.

Thanks for the intel!

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Originally Posted by BannedatRegistration

is it worth it for both Healers to pop HQ Potent Poison Pots or should they save the CD on Mind Potions then cleric stance?

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Poison pots and stat pots do not share a cooldown, however stat pots and Ethers (and I think even Elixers and HP pots as well) share the same CD.

Just thought I'd throw that fun piece of information out there. c:

from my experience a scholar can full out dps through the first phase
after that the only times that seem viable at all to drop some dots are when it's casting the big missile right at the start of each of it's second phase cycles or during the resin bomb but as usual it still hits the tanks quite hard with melee attacks while casting so there is some level of risk involved.

Personally i'm a bit irritated that there are such high dps checks that your forced to use a healer at all while at the same time they completely strip accuracy off our gear.
Either put some sort of big accuracy bonus on cleric stance or kick back these dps checks to not include healers imo
enrages were created to prevent cheesy strategies like kiting a boss around for half an hour and got corrupted into this super annoying everyone needs to be flawless start to finish to kill it in time thing...

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Originally Posted by Vid

Do you also throw in Aero as well? We only recently cleared AS1 ourselves this week, so I'm looking at anyway to improve my dps as well.

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Yes. Aero's 200 potency, which beats out Broil's potency. The "standard" rotation is Bio II -> Miasma -> Bio I -> Aero -> Shadowflare (unless you've pre-cast it).

I got to disagree with some points stated in this post, while its true that SCH has more DPS, its more substained DPS compared to WHM burstdps, basically if you let the WHM keep his dots up you'll deal more raiddps than you spamming broil(unless this results in downtime on your dots, since aero>broil). With that concept in Mind, i encourage our WHM to dps more and i cover her, our tanks are dpshungry and need more healing. Our Raid has considerably high DPS, splitting Opressor around 55-57% and nearly killing both(4 and 5%) before the third jump.

That's why i prefer to use EOS to cover the first two Gunnery Pods, using sic(!) whenever i need additonal Healing.
1. Virus at the start, it'll up for the tankbuster and allows your WHM to dps a bit longer.
2. Bane during Emergency Deployment(ADS), make sure to wait until the ads are bound to their DPS
3. Aero/Ruin II during moving, especially useful on Resinbombs, pop sprint!

http://i.imgur.com/8TMZq5G.jpg

After looking into more than 20 different kill parses one thing got clear to me: Heal DPS is something that depends on tank DPS. The higher the tank DPS was, the lower the heal DPS got.

So I've stopped to just look at heal DPS alone and started to merge heal and tank DPS, as the goal should be to get the best synergy between both.

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Originally Posted by MariaNyan

snip

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Do you know of a break down like this for WHM? Ive been making some notes like this for myself.

One thing that I don't see many other SCH doing, is handling the first pair of adds that come from the oppressor during the first phase.
I have melee and myself drop resin right under the boss on one side (where an add will spawn, then I back up from it, and drop a shadow flare there, refresh my dots on the boss, and then as soon as both adds appear, I bane them to tag them both. the one on the far side, runs into the resin, which stacks the two adds nicely, I just need to burn one of them quickly, which lets the other take his time giving you his stacks so you don't get the minimize debuff. (if both give you stacks 3 times, you'll get mini, but if you kill one of them with it only having time to give you 2 stacks, the last add can live longer, so you can usually just let the dots finish it.)

This allows all of your dps to focus on the boss during this time, which is better dps for your raid group as a whole. (note: if your personal dps isn't good enough to kill an add before it can give you 3 stacks, then have one of the dps help you kill one. anyone with an execute-type attack is ideal, as the timing for the 2nd add isn't as important. the main thing is to optimize the dps on the boss for your raid group as a whole during this time.

As for Prey in the first phase, you can land a virus after applying your first two dots right on the pull, this should reduce the damage of the first cleave, and the first prey significantly, so that your healing partner shouldn't have much trouble. The 2nd Prey is abit more difficult, as there are a couple gunnery pod attacks before and after it, which makes it more dangerous. If you need to, drop out and help heal for that one, but I find that as long as they expect it, its not that bad. I'll usually have the Fairy heal the person with prey while I continue to dps.
In the first 90 seconds, before the 0.5 comes out, I do about 750 dps. Which, I feel is more than a healer needs to contribute, but it makes meeting the dps check alot easier if your dps can ignore the adds.

Also, for tank busters, when missiles from prey are hitting their target, if you virus the boss after the 2nd missile lands, you'll reduce the damage from the cleave, and the tank buster. Just don't be earlier than that, or it'll drop off before the plasma hits. This is also the ideal time to use cooldowns like Sentinel, as it can mitigate both.